Despite a decade-long track record, many academics are still skeptical of the technology-fueled course redesign movement.
As a newcomer to the Department of Natural Sciences at University of Maryland-Eastern Shore in fall 2007, assistant biochemistry professor Jennifer L. Hearne concluded from teaching “Principles of Chemistry I” that the introductory general education course needed a makeover.
“I knew there had to be a more efficient way. We had four people teaching the same class and there was no coordination. We all just did our own thing, which seemed like a huge waste of time to me. Not only that, there was no technology, so I was grading hundreds of papers every day, and it just didn’t make sense to me,” she says.
In addition to alleviating teaching inefficiencies, Hearne saw the potential “to improve student learning outcomes” with a better organized course. “We found that about 55 percent of our students were failing this course and that’s severe when you have that high of a fail rate in a freshman class,” she explains.
Hearne’s move to UMES, a historically Black university, coincided with the University of Maryland system having undertaken a course redesign initiative. The initiative, begun in 2006, had invited professors teaching introductory courses in math, science, social sciences and the humanities to use information technology and other efficiency measures to improve student learning outcomes and to lower academic department costs. Each Maryland campus was charged with “redesigning at least one pilot course during a three-year period starting in 2006,” according to University of Maryland system officials.
In the spring of 2008, a fully redesigned pilot phase of “Principles of Chemistry I,” utilizing an online tutorial and reducing weekly classes from three to two, saw the student pass rate increase from 55 to 66 percent from the previous semester among health and science majors, according to Hearne. She says the tutorials have played a critical role in helping students gain a thorough understanding of their progress and shortcomings in learning the course material.
“I thought by incorporating technology into their coursework we could promote their self-development and teach them how to efficiently learn chemistry,” Hearne says.
