March 2000 — Features
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Web-Enhanced Lecture Course Scores Big with Students and Faculty
“I did know how the Web could be used for teaching, but it contains an enormous amount of information, and I enjoyed looking for it.”
Data Obtained During the Web-Enhanced Course
One of the main measures that WebCT reports is how many hits the student has made on various pages of the Web site. Obviously, if the number of hits is low, then the student is not working. However, if a student worked hard, then one might expect the time per hit to increase with the number of hits.
As shown in Fig. 1, there is a poor correlation below 80 hits (i.e. for most students, the number of hits is not representative of how hard they work). It was interesting to note the total number of hits versus the week of the semester for three students (Fig. 2). A slow week of Web site usage coincided with the first part of Spring break and it was followed by heavy usage during the week classes resumed. In a separate study, I found that only 2 out of 25 students used the Web within 5 hours of an exam. There appeared to be a lot of Web usage after the exams.
The number of hits d'es not seem to correlate with the final grade achieved (Fig. 3: from the top line: “A” students are represented by the triangle, “C” students by the diamond, and “B” students by the circle). However, the number of articles that a student read on the Web site Bulletin Board did seem to correlate with final grades (see Fig. 4).
In summary, most students found that a Web site helped them in the lecture course. Whether this Web site increased student grades is still not known, since this was the first time the course was given in conjunction with the Web site.
Dr. Stith received his Ph.D. in physiology in 1982, and has taught at the University of Colorado-Denver since 1987. He has received over a million dollars in research grants from the National Science Foundation and a French pharmaceutical company. He teaches General Cell Biology, Developmental Biology and two graduate courses.
E-mail: bstith@carbon.cudenver.edu
Acknowledgements
In addition to the students who took this first course in Developmental Biology, I would like to thank May Lowry, Ed Nuhfer, Carl Pletsch and Vickey Wood for their help. I would like to acknowledge financial help from the ITI grant program, David Kassoy (Large Course Development Project) and from a challenge grant to The UCD Office of Teaching Effectiveness (E. Nuhfer, C. Pletsch). Space came from the School of Education (Tom Bellamy).
