by Troy Joseph, Instructor, Department of Economics, Carleton University
As instructors, we often feel challenged to teach high-enrolment classes, resigned to accept that the helpful things we do for students in small settings — like giving customized feedback and guidance — can’t be scaled up for our larger classes. But with targeted planning and leveraging LMS tools, mass enrolment need not bring an impersonal experience. Indeed, it can ensure your feedback finds large numbers of students for whom your insights feel personal.
The twin challenges: high enrolment and multiple choice questions go together; and students want their grades to reflect what they learn from a class and how much work they put into it.
Instructors of intro courses generally have access to banks of questions, whether developed on their own, licensed from publishers, or drawn from past exams. When our university adopted a new LMS a year ago, I devoted efforts to importing a large bank of questions into our new system, a multi-stage procedure of pre-unencoding, importing, then recoding, and adding images — Hercules himself would have begged for mercy. The payoff: a strategically parcelled set of ‘daily practice tests’ released each day in the 10-day countdown to each course exam, a pace balancing the ambitions of students to do well, while not overwhelming the students who may feel exacerbated.
With the release of this tool, I waited for performance to escalate to echelons never seen before. What were the results? On the encouraging side, the practice tests were met with high take-up rates starting on day one. Mid-to-strong-performing students completed tests each day recognizing the potential to enhance their performance. Indeed, my inbox had a daily stream of questions about how to find the solutions to the more challenging questions.
Meanwhile, the weaker performers undertook some of these practice tests, but their zeal faded after the first few, sometimes submitting random answers to get the correct answers to appear — perhaps hoping to memorize correct responses in case the questions reappeared on tests.
The solution became apparent: each question needed feedback on how to arrive at solutions. Strong students might only consult the feedback occasionally, while the lower performers would likely benefit from more frequent consultations.
I realized the key to supercharging the value of the tool for class members would be to redouble efforts by adding solutions to each question. After completing the task for one-third of questions during some downtime in the summer, I realized I wouldn’t have the time to continue as courses got underway in the new academic year.
The solution: Who better to see the benefits of the practice test tool through the eyes of an aspiring learner than a former student who was an active and effective user of the tool?
Continued by Pedro Lemos, 2nd-year Undergraduate Student, Bachelor of Economics
When Professor Joseph approached me to discuss working on practice tests, my reaction was positive, since participating in this project would allow me to review basic, but fundamental subjects related to Economics. And by doing it, I was able to increase the robustness of my learning. Without a doubt, this “review” process will be very useful for me in the future.
The dynamics of the project were very interesting because as a student, the skills that are necessary to answer a question are slightly different from explaining to someone why a certain answer is correct. This opportunity to face exercises from the teaching perspective enriched my learning.
Also, moving from the “student place” to a “collaborator” in designing the course, revealed new challenges that went beyond the academic topics. As an example, students have different forms of studying, so I needed to understand the challenges a typical first-year Economics student faces while studying for a test. How could I make my explanation the most efficient in order to meet all students’ needs?
While in this process of improving my explanations in order to make them understandable for the common student, I reviewed every course topic to get a full understanding of the most difficult parts in order to explain them in the most simple way. As a result, I discovered some flaws in my knowledge of some topics and I was able to clarify whatever questions I had.
I’m grateful to the Students as Partners Program (SaPP) and Professor Joseph for the opportunity. It provided an in-depth review of the basic topics of Macroeconomics which will facilitate my comprehension as more complex concepts arise in my later studies. Also, during the project, I learned different perspectives on the topics and the learning process that, if it weren’t for the SaPP program, I would not have been motivated to consider.