Delta Interns put CIRTL Pillars into Practice
Melissa Tully

The work of Matt D’Amato and Erica Howard, two participants in the Delta Program in Research, Teaching, and Learning at the University of Wisconsin, highlights the success of the CIRTL pillars in practice.  D’Amato’s internship at Madison Area Technical College (MATC), which involved creation and implementation of a learning object on fuel-cell technology, and Howard’s contributions to the online course Humans and the Changing Biosphere are just two examples that illustrate the CIRTL mission, preparing future STEM faculty to implement effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences.

The Delta Internship Program aims to give participants practical experience to develop their skills and interests in teaching and learning, as they work in partnership with faculty members.  Interns and partners define a teaching and learning problem that they want to address, work toward a solution, implement the solution, evaluate the solution and create a product that will be incorporated into their teaching portfolios.

D’Amato worked with Dr. Barbara Anderegg (Consortium for Education in Renewable Energy Technologies) and others at MATC to develop a fuel-cell technology learning object (LO).  A learning object is a brief, web-based tutorial designed to convey a “nugget” of information in an interactive manner.  The content of D’Amato’s learning object about fuel-cell materials technology is designed for a freshman-level college or upper level high school course in chemistry or physics.  It seeks to engage students with diverse learning styles by having visual as well as audio components.  Varying the content style allows students to see the material in more than one way.

According to D’Amato, “The internship experience overall was a success for everyone involved.  Many students provided feedback that described how they enjoyed the learning objects, the regular course instructors saw the utility of the learning objects and used them again in 2005 and encouraged their colleagues to do the same, and a new lab activity was introduced which can also be part of the unit in future courses.” 

D’Amato and his colleagues were interested to see if (1) students could simply recall facts about fuel cells from viewing the LO; (2) students had an understanding of basic concepts like how a catalyst works; and (3) students could apply knowledge from the LO to other fields unrelated to fuel cells.  The average quiz score on multiple-choice questions rose from 40% to 80% between the pre-quiz and post-quiz taken after using the LO.  Essay questions were used to identify students’ misconceptions about fuel cell technology.  In addition, a post-course written evaluation was given to all students asking them to rate their learning gains using the LO technology.  Results showed that many students enjoyed using the LOs to access information about fuel-cell technology on their own time and at their own pace, but some still preferred the “human interaction” of having the material taught in class.

As D’Amato engaged in teaching-as-research, he learned the successes and limitations of the LO and how to improve it, gained a better understanding of the students experiences with the LO, and developed a further understanding of the concept of teaching-as-research.  According to D’Amato, “… I learned a lot about teaching-as-research (TAR) in practice.  Some answers to the quiz questions provided me with unexpected insight into what students were thinking.  One of the most important things I learned was that simply attempting a TAR experiment could inform me of student learning.”

The work of D’Amato and his colleagues, Kenneth W. Lux (Department of Engineering Physics and Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, UW), Holly Walter Kerby (Chemistry Department, MATC), and Barbara Anderegg, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Chemical Education.   Their article, “Introducing New Technology to an Old Classroom: A multi-tool approach to integrating fuel-cell concepts into the general chemistry curriculum” is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal.  The article describes an approach to deliver the science and engineering concepts involved in fuel-cell technology to the general chemistry classroom.  This approach includes using traditional lectures, multimedia learning objects, and a new lab activity to enhance student learning in a hands-on, interactive manner.   

Erica Howard, Ph.D. dissertator in the Land Resources program, is in the process of receiving her Delta Certificate.  As a part of her Certificate program she redesigned the Humans and the Changing Biosphere, an online course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Howard collaborated with UW faculty, Jon Foley, Chris Kucharik, and Carol Barford to create an online course that is more accessible to all students (science and non-science majors, undergraduate and graduate students) regardless of prior exposure to Earth sciences.  The course targets students who cannot be in the classroom for a variety of reasons.  This non-traditional class attracts a diverse student population with much to contribute to the course.

The original course had an overwhelming amount of detailed material, which was organized by topics followed later in the semester by “real-life” applications of the material.  There was little student discussion or opportunity for student feedback.  Howard has worked to restructure the entire course, building on existing elements and adding new ones.  The course has gone through many drastic changes as a result of what Howard and others learned through their teaching-as-research. 

In the first semester, the course was structured in a very traditional way with little student interaction and only a final student evaluation of the course.  After Howard’s first redesign of the course, there was more student discussion but it was still very directed, the basic content still came before the “real-life” applications, but there was more student feedback with new midterm and final course evaluations.  With the knowledge she gained from the redesigned course offering, Howard made even more improvements.  The third semester format has “real life” case studies interspersed throughout the semester; has an interactive discussion board where students must post substantive messages every week; has incorporated learning objects; and has midterm and final student evaluations to gain more information on what students are learning, how they can learn more, and their general reactions to the course.

The enhanced discussion component is a major improvement to the course.  Students get graded on their participation and must respond to other posts.  Students are given open-ended questions that have no right or wrong answer, but are intended to stimulate conversation.  In the discussion, a variety of topics arise that may have not been introduced otherwise.  It is a place for the students’ voice and opinion to really mean something.  Students have been fully engaged in the discussion and participation is close to 100 percent.  Through this component of the course, students have developed a learning community, a place to share their ideas and interact with each other.  Howard thinks that next time the course is offered, she may break the class into smaller discussion groups to create even more student interaction. 

Overall Howard was very pleased with her experience and the changes to the course.  According to Howard, “It seemed that a lot of the changes we implemented did result in some better final grades and some excellent final evaluation comments from last semester’s student compared to the comments from previous semester’s students.  So we believed that the whole process of using my Delta Internship to get us involved in teaching-as-research really resulted in some concrete improvements to student learning.” 

The Delta Internship Program has been a valuable part of the Delta Certificate Program.  To learn more about the Delta Internship Program visit http://www.delta.wisc.edu/Programs/internships/intern_main.html.

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