I was interested in the Mazur method of having students answer short questions on the reading just before class, and then have the instructor review them just before class as well. It would motivate students to read (if graded in some way), and would create an immediate interest/point of dialogue with students. It might also form a bridge between the online and the in campus session if the questions related to materials the students should have read online the session or week before. It seems to make quizzes a real teaching instrument and takes advantage of the online to class transitions, which otherwise might be a bit rough/uncomfortable. The main issue I can see is students complaining they don’t have enough time to do it shortly before class, and the instructor having time to review all of the answers right before class and responding to them. If the results were automatically collated and graphed in some way and thus could be shown to the class, that would be helpful. Can blackboard do that (I assume so)? But how?
– Steve
Steve, in the Grade Center for your course, Blackboard can give you “attempts statistics” for an assessment such as an auto-graded quiz. This shows, for instance, the percentage of students who gave each answer on a multiple-choice question. The results aren’t graphed, though you could download them and graph them yourself via Excel; I don’t think that extra work would be necessary in most instances!
In terms of timing for students, success is largely a matter of organizing a regular hybrid course workflow for students, and communicating it well at the beginning of the course. If students know they will complete a “low-stakes” (i.e., a very small percentage of the course grade) online quiz each Mon.-Wed. prior to coming to a weekly class on Thursday, they will quickly adapt. When students see that completing the quizzes really helps them both in class and in subsequent major assessments, the vast majority will gladly participate!
In terms of timing for the instructor, you could likely review the attempts statistics in 10 minutes prior to each class. To have something to show the class, you could use screen shots of the attempts statistics to capture a few things you want to highlight.
Thanks to Karen Watte for her Blackboard expertise to help answer this question!
With apologies in advance for introducing yet another piece of technology, there is another option to collect and display student responses to a quiz and have them automatically upload to Blackboard: Clickers (audience response system). Nearly all of the undergrad students on the Corvallis campus have Turning clickers. The instructor creates a simple PowerPoint slide with the quiz quesions on it, and students respond with their hand-held devices. The timing is different from the Mazur model in that the results are not available until all students are physically in the classroom, where they respond to the quiz. But the graphical display of responses is dead simple, and instantly available to all. If you’d like more info, just let me know.
Lynn, thanks for bringing up clickers. To clarify, Eric Mazur also uses clickers in the classroom (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBYrKPoVFwg).
According to the OSU bookstore, 10,437 Turning clickers have been purchased by students in the Fall and Winter terms of this academic year (in Fall of 2011 we switched from a different brand of clickers to Turning). My assumption is that most of these students are freshmen and sophomores, since clickers are required in many of the large bacc core courses. We have seen more instructors becoming interested in using clickers in their classes. Once students purchase a clicker they keep it throughout the school year like a calculator or similar technology. Hope this helps, and let me know if you have follow up questions. There is great technical and pedagogical support for instructors who are interested in starting to use clickers.