Online Biology Tutorials Support Student Engagement and Success at Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Opportunity

The Provost Office at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, issued a call through the Teaching and Learning Framework (TLF) Fund seeking proposals for initiatives to support students’ access and success. At the same time, Dr. Jane Costello, Senior Instructional Designer in the Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL), was in discussions with biology faculty about the learning challenges of first-year students and the potential design of modules that could be developed as support materials. A proposal to develop online biology tutorials, through collaboration between biology faculty (subject matter experts - SMEs) and CITL, was successful in acquiring funding for two years, from 2016 to 2018, from the TLF Fund.

Ruth Hickey, Manager, Learning Design and Development in CITL, stresses the design and development process used for creation of these tutorials is highly collaborative, combining subject matter expertise with learning and media design know-how. She also underlines that CITL employs an open philosophy when approaching projects such as this with a goal of creating learning resources that can be “re-purposed, re-used and inspire”.

The project team included:

• Biology Faculty (SME): Anna Rissanen, Margaret Caldwell, Piotr Trela, Sally Goddard, and Amy Todd;
• Instructional Design/Project Management: Jane Costello and Ruth Hickey;
• Graduate Student Assistant: Marshall Rodriguez; and
• CITL Media and Design: Kevin O’Leary, Geoff Waye, Jamie Chang, Mark Shallow, and Paul Hayward.

Innovation

The online tutorials address knowledge gaps resulting in low success rates and attrition of first-year biology students. Topics covered in the optional tutorials were chosen based on a student survey, pre-post-test results, faculty experience and past final exam results. Eight topics emerged as the most troublesome concepts. However, given time and funding constraints, five of them, including The Plasma Membrane, Diffusion and Osmosis, Eukaryotic Cell, Meiosis and Inheritance, and DNA to RNA to Proteins were created.

Weekly meetings between SMEs and learning and media designers were used to consider the overall design for the series, produce storyboards, and plan and review multimedia elements. Dr. Costello, as instructional designer, guided the choices and structure of the development approach and activities for the tutorials. SMEs prepared scripts for videos, activities and quizzes, and multimedia specialists designed mock-ups for review and approval by the team.>

Each tutorial has a consistent design:

• Introduction to expected learning outcomes of the tutorial;
• Explanation of concept, using animation and video;
• Interactive activities allowing students to engage with the content. These include animations, drag and drop and matching objects, self-check quizzes, and reflection questions. Immediate feedback is designed into the activities so students can monitor their progress. Each activity can be repeated as often as students wish;
• The mix of video and activities is repeated through each tutorial, relating to the troublesome concepts;
• Self-assessment quizzes can be repeated as often as the student wants; the assessment design employs the randomization features of the tool for both answers and questions in the question library, giving students a different experience with each attempt;
• Reflection questions are included based on student feedback from one of the first focus group session. The questions relate topic learning to real life experience. The SMEs prepared answers that were hidden by design; students have the opportunity to formulate an answer based on their understanding before revealing the prepared response. These questions are good preparation for the final exam; and
• Badges are awarded for each tutorial as acknowledgement of the student’s level of participation and achievement: a silver badge for viewing every page and gold for earning 100% on the self-assessment quiz.

Each complete tutorial was subject to beta-testing with focus groups and subsequent revision. For Ruth Hickey, and the team, an indication the design approach works was the declining need for revisions after the first tutorial’s testing.

The five complete tutorials were first offered as supplementary resources to first-year biology students in September 2017; in addition, the tutorials were available to students in other programs, including nursing and second-year biology. The design of the material was easily shared amongst sites within the learning management system (LMS), as faculty were taught how to add them to their course sites versus a separate tutorial site. With the professor’s encouragement, students can access the tutorials at any time and as often as they want during a semester.

Benefits and Outcomes

The assessment of effectiveness of the pilot included pre-test questions in week one of the course that were presented again as a part of the final exam (i.e. post-test). Student performance on the mid-term exam also factored into the assessment. In addition, 225 students who used the online tutorials submitted surveys that yielded qualitative data to consider. Results were compared between tutorial users and non-users in 2017, as well as to students in the 2016 class who did not have access to the tutorials.

Students (410 students) who participated in online tutorials by answering quiz questions in at least one tutorial had higher grades than those who did not participate (160 students). Overall, the 2017 cohort with access to tutorials had higher grades than the 2016 cohort who did not.

Students who used the online tutorials in 2017 reported they:

• Were more likely to have their readings done before class;
• Received more prompt written or oral feedback on their academic performance;
• Applied theories or concepts to practical problems or in a new situation more often; and
• Took notes in class more often.

Comments from the students reflected their valuing of the tutorials:

• These are great! Why aren't they available for all the topics on the course?;
• …liked the active learning - activities, quizzes, drag and drop etc., and the fact that they were not being assessed and I could use them as often as I needed to be comfortable with the material!; and
• It makes sense now! (RE: osmosis tutorial).

Students agreed, in survey responses and focus groups, that course content was easy to find, concepts made sense, tutorials were easy to follow, and the website was pleasing to the eye.

Faculty offered personal reflections during development and at the end of the pilot semester:

• From my perspective, I have enjoyed this process from start to where we are now! Working with CITL has been interesting and fun. I learned such a lot about the process of taking ideas and turning them into videos, activities and quizzes, and the work was so collegial at every step of the way. Listening to the students on Friday telling me how they found the tutorials helpful was the icing on the cake!!

• I particularly enjoyed the team work involved in collaborating with the other biology professors and the CITL team members. I found our meetings were professional and productive. I enjoyed our critiquing of each others’ work, and I liked the way we all respected each others’ ideas and suggestions. The technical side of creating the tutorials such as storyboarding, and making the animations was all new to me, and I learned so much. It was fun doing the voice-overs as well.

For the Memorial University community, a course shell containing the tutorials is available so they can be copied into any course’s site within the LMS. This includes the full tutorial, with self-assessment quizzes and reflective questions. Transferability of the tutorials, as well as their design and structure, was an essential guideline for development from the beginning of the process.>

The media objects of each tutorial are available through Linney, the learning object repository at Memorial University, by searching under Biology. The more than 80 learning objects are available under Creative Commons licensing as open educational resources (OER) to be freely used anywhere in the world.

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