Open Education 2017

Previous research on OER efficacy has analyzed student outcomes by comparing courses employing open source textbooks with courses employing commercial textbooks. This research takes a more granular approach, not just looking at whether a course employs OER, but rather looking at how different patterns of student usage of adaptive courseware affect student learning.

For the courses analyzed, Lumen Learning's adaptive courseware platform ("Waymaker") was employed. Waymaker was designed to encourage student metacognition, but to what extent was this successful? That depends on how it was actually used by students.

Waymaker modules include a formative pretest, a number of short formative assessments within the module and an end-of module summative posttest. The pretest provides information to students about what parts of the module they already know well and which parts do they still need to learn. As the student works through the module, after interacting with each bit of content, he or she takes a one or two question quiz to give them immediate feedback about how well they learned the material. Finally, a comprehensive end of module quiz provides information about whether or not the student has mastered the material in the module.

This presentation will catalog the different patterns of student usage of Waymaker.

- Are students working through the Waymaker modules regularly and systematically (e.g. to match the pace & coverage of what occurs during class sessions), or are students waiting until just before exams to bunch/cram their work with Waymaker just before exams?

- Are students taking the different assessments?

- How are students responding to the formative information provided by the assessments (e.g, are they putting more effort into those areas Waymaker says they haven't mastered)?

Last, the presentation will report the results of statistical analyses to estimate the effects of different usage practices on student learning.