Transforming the Online Course

Traditional large lecture classes are fundamentally passive and teacher-centered. Most existing online courses are as well, including massive open online courses (MOOCs). Research tells us that this mode of instruction is not ideal for student learning. However, the unique attributes of the online environment have thus far been mostly underutilized. We hypothesize that new tools and the innovative curricula they enable can foster greater student engagement and enhance learning at large scale. To test this hypothesis, over the past three years, Arizona State University developed and offered "Habitable Worlds", an online-only astrobiology lab course. The course curriculum is based on the Drake Equation, which integrates across disciplines. The course pedagogy is organized around a term-long, individualized, game-inspired project in which each student must find and characterize rare habitable planets in a randomized field of hundreds of stars using concepts learned in the course. The curriculum allows us to meaningfully integrate concepts from Earth, physical, life, and social sciences in order to address questions related to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The pedagogy motivates students to master concepts, which are taught through interactive and adaptive inquiry-driven tutorials, featuring focused feedback and alternative pathways that adjust to student abilities, built using an intelligent tutoring system (Smart Sparrow's Adaptive eLearning Platform - AeLP). Through the combination of the project and tutorials, students construct knowledge from experience, modeling the authentic practice of science. Because the tutorials are self-grading, the teaching staff is free to dedicate time to more intense learner-teacher interactions (such as tutoring weaker students or guiding advanced students towards broader applications of the concepts), using platforms like Piazza and Adobe Connect. The AeLP and Piazza provide robust data and analysis tools that allow us to investigate how students interact with the exercises, both in aggregate and at the individual level. These data have allowed us to identify and fix hidden problems in the exercises that students do not vocalize. More importantly, the AeLP provides the opportunity to construct and evaluate hypotheses in content presentation and evaluation methods that are simply not possible in traditional classroom settings, a task we are currently undertaking to determine the effectiveness of our approach.