Adaptive Learning Course Yields 'Hopeful' Results

As the first ULearn Faculty Fellow through the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Office of Distance Learning, Master chemistry instructor Andrea Leonard was tasked with creating a course rich in adaptive and active learning elements.

The introductory chemistry course opened to students for the summer semester, which ended July 27. 

Key features of the course included a free, integrated textbook; text, audio, and note card options for learning; and added freedom for students to pursue elements of the course as they saw fit instead of following a strict, linear plan.

The experience for students, Leonard says, wasn’t what they would typically get from a general chemistry course.

“I had several students tell me this was the easiest way to learn a difficult concept because it was like playing a game,” she says. “They just had to keep trying until they got ‘green,’ and then they could move forward.”

For students to access all of the information that was on the exams, students had to successfully complete a component. Once the student completed their component, then other components opened up, sometimes allowing students to “choose their own adventure” in terms of what information to tackle next.

“Typically you’re rewarded for your successes with a grade, but it’s more than that. It’s not only, ‘Good job; you learned this,’ but also, ‘Now that we know you can handle this, here’s some more stuff we think you can handle,’” Leonard explains. “I would think that would make it feel more accessible to the student, like a ramp instead of stairs.”

Although a true analysis isn’t possible yet because of a lack of data, Leonard calls the results so far “hopeful.” Compared to Summer 2017, “A” grades increased from 36 percent of students to 47 percent.

“That’s good; we managed to push more students up into the ‘A’ bracket,” Leonard says. “Of course, that’s just one semester’s data so it’s not a true analysis, but it’s hopeful and it lets me know I did not design a tool that hurt the students.”  

Meanwhile, the percentage of students withdrawing from the course with a W or earning a “D” or “F” dropped from 21 percent to 18 percent.

In addition, the average GPA rose from a 2.77 to 2.96.

“These gaps aren’t enormous, but currently I can say the experiment yielded similar if not slightly improved results compared to last summer’s online course,” Leonard says. “So it feels good that, yea, we did get a little bump.”

“This is why we designed this fellowship,” says Dr. Claire Arabie, interim director for the Office of Distance Learning. “We want to see instructors explore and take ownership of new pedagogies that lead to improved student engagement and long-term student success.”

Beyond the numbers, students told Leonard their course experience was positive, asking if the course design could carry to the next level of general chemistry.

Although that’s the long-term goal, Leonard says that expansion is a couple of years down the road. For now, she’s looking toward the start of fall when 80 students will be enrolled in her course. The summer semester had 49.

On top of that, the DFW rate for students in the Fall and Spring are about 30 percent, versus 18 percent in the Summer, with an average grade of 2.2 versus Summer’s 2.7.

Rolling the course out in the summer held a few advantages, Leonard says. Although there’s less time, there’s also a smaller, more focused student population to work with while troubleshooting new tools and content.

“We’re going to have a different type of population in the class and we’re going to have to see what kind of success these students have with the product,” Leonard says. “I have really good hope for it.”