Looking for interactive, online learning modules to help students review fundamental math skills or learn concepts related to social science research methods and statistics? We may have the courseware for you!
As part of the Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts initiative, Bryn Mawr College has led two multi-institutional, grant-funded projects to develop online learning modules in these areas. A grant from the Teagle Foundation’s Hybrid Learning and the Residential Liberal Arts Experience, brought together faculty from eight colleges to develop online learning materials they needed to blend instruction in their psychology research methods and statistics courses. A grant from the U. S. Department of Education’s FIPSE First in the World program (P116F140302) brought faculty from several liberal arts colleges together to develop and test a blended, “just-in-time” approach to helping students identify and review fundamental math skills they needed to succeed in introductory math and science courses. The online, interactive materials we developed for each of these projects have been through a few rounds of iterative development and pilot-testing, and we would like to invite interested faculty to consider adopting or adapting them for their own courses.
The modules were developed on the open-source platform IMathAS platform, which is available as a free hosted service at myopenmath.com. The platform was designed as a place to host supplemental materials and homework solutions for free, open textbooks and is maintained by a community of volunteers. A low-cost, fully supported option is available through Lumen Learning. One of the strengths of the platform is that it allows instructors to share and adapt each other’s content. The materials developed for these projects were built on libraries developed by others and will be shared to the system for others to use. For an overview of the materials, design principles behind them, and information on how to view them, see our Blended, Just-in-Time Math Fundamentals Instructor's Guide and Psychology Research Methods and Statistics Instructor's Guide. We are looking for faculty interested in testing these materials in courses and participating in our evaluation study.
Both suites of materials will be featured in a lightning round presentation for the Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference at Bryn Mawr College on Wednesday May 23 and at the LACOL 2018 Workshop at Carleton College on May 31-June 1.