| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 21, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 21, 2015 |
| Award Number: | 1505246 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Karen Keene
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $248,724.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $248,724.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
CALTECH, 1200 E CALIFORNIA BLVD PASADENA CA US 91125-0001 (408)350-2088 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
CA US 94306-2244 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | IUSE |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Finding online resources for the learning and teaching of college mathematics is not difficult -- resources abound. However, finding resources that are readily available, field-tested in a variety of settings, and known to be high quality is more of a challenge. This exploration project will (1) provide materials such as textbook content, videos, interactive applets, and instructor guides; (2) identify optimal methods for building comprehensive, quality-controlled, and curated libraries of freely reusable instructional materials for college-level mathematics courses; and (3) investigate the impact of such a library on faculty adoption of evidence-based teaching practices. The materials will be created and curated collaboratively, and the project will provide training in the development and use of such content. The project will explore how this new approach enables instructors to locate and utilize a variety of curricular materials in the classroom.
As a starting point for a curated course, the project will focus on linear algebra because these courses are important for real-world applications as well as for the mathematical theory. The project team will develop a platform for hosting and disseminating open mathematics content, identify optimal ways to foster a collaborative approach to content creation, and run workshops to train faculty in the use of open content. By measuring how the open content is being used and reused by instructors, the investigators will discover what features of online content are especially effective at encouraging broad adoption by mathematicians.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The CuratedCourses project developed a new approach to organizing educational resources, with the goal of increasing the use of evidence-based educational practices. Active learning techniques, such as blended learning and flipped classrooms, have been shown to be more effective than traditional lecture formats. However, such techniques are still not widely used. The CuratedCourses project takes the premise that a major impediment to the use of new methods is the difficulty instructors have either in developing suitable material or in locating suitable existing material. CuratedCourses addresses both of those difficulties, developing how-to videos explaining the process by which educators can produce their own instructional material, and developing an innovative new approach to organizing existing material.
The videos cover the use of a green screen, a lightboard, voiceover on beamer slides, screencast on a tablet, and paper-and-pen techniques. The videos are accompanied by advice for producing high-quality audio, and high-quality screen capture.
The new approach to organizing educational materials addresses the common shortcoming of using keywords: a small number of keywords cannot capture the huge variety and subtle differences between similar resources, and users could potentially choose different keywords to describe the same resource. The CuratedCourses approach is to produce a detailed hierarchical taxonomy covering every topic in a traditional college course, and assign a unique identifier to each topic. Identifiers can then be attached to educational resources, removing all guesswork from searching, and ensuring that the desired material has been found. Coupled with an evaluation system to verify that materials are of high quality, this approach removes a significant barrier to instructors implementing a flipped classroom.
This method was developed for Linear Algebra, dividing that subject into approximately 800 sub-topics.
The videos, linear algebra taxonomy, tagged resources, and other materials
are available on the CuratedCourses.org website.
In addition, outreach and training activities, and specific features on the CuratedCourses.org website, include:
- hosted three workshops to develop standards for collaborative content design to make OERs that are maximally flexible and useful to instructors in a variety of educational settings
- collaboratively developed and curated a comprehensive set of OER materials for linear algebra (suitable for teaching a variety of courses ranging from applied non-majors courses to a more pure mathematics audience), which is available as a module in any learning management system
- mapped the linear algebra tagging codes to four major textbooks to facilitate
content discovery for instructors and students using those texts
- created a web interface for individuals to upload, describe and tag resources
- created a web interface for individuals to browse and search for mathematics OER content
- created an infrastructure for facilitating peer review of OERs
- ran two mini-courses for college math instructors on how to implement a flipped classroom instructional approach utilizing OERs
- gave several conference presentations on the curated courses model to invite collaboration
- developed a tagging system for Combinatorics, which was learning outcome-based instead of topic-based
Last Modified: 01/08/2019
Modified by: David W Farmer
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