UB Investigates How Technology Can Enhance Learning And Lower Instructional Costs

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo this fall will begin a two-year project to design and pilot a course in information technology that is expected to enhance the quality of teaching and increase learning while reducing instructional costs by 46 percent.

The project will be funded by a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. UB was one of only 10 institutions nationwide to receive funding under this initiative, which is expected find some answers to one of the most hotly debated questions in education today: whether the use of information technologies in the classroom actually improves teaching and promotes learning. Some educators claim that computers do not significantly improve learning outcomes and that the continual purchase and upgrading of computer systems, plus the cost of instruction in their use, are driving up the cost of education.

UB project director Deborah Walters, professor of computer science and engineering and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, says that the project is based on the hypothesis that carefully selected changes in teaching methodologies will improve learning outcomes while reducing instructional cost.

Walters says she expects that the project will reduce by nearly half the cost of educating each student.

In accordance with the Pew Trust's request, the locus of the experiment will be one of UB's larger classes, Computer Science and Engineering 101 (CSE 101), a freshman-level computer-literacy course with an annual enrollment of 1,000 students from many different departments.

During the Fall 1999 semester, the project team will collect baseline data on instructional costs and the quality of learning produced by the course as it is now constituted. Team members also will redesign CSE 101 and offer the new version in the Spring 2000 semester. The team will then compare learning and cost data of the redesigned course with the baseline data and refine the design accordingly so that the new course can be offered in the Fall 2000 semester.

Walters explains that the goal of both the current and redesigned course is to educate students about technology in general and about computers in particular. Students will learn some basic skills, such as how to use a word processor and a spreadsheet, as well as the concepts underlying the skills. This will enable them to develop the capabilities to cope with the technology itself, as well as with the inevitable changes to it.

Until now, the course has been taught in large lecture sections of approximately 200 students each that meet for three hours a week. In addition to the lecture, the students have two hours of formal lab and two hours of open lab time per week.

A full-time non-tenure-track faculty member teaches two course section per semester and a temporary lecturer covers the third. Lab sessions are taught by seven graduate teaching assistants. They also help to staff the lab during open lab hours by holding their office hours in the lab.

Undergraduate students are paid at an hourly rate to staff the lab during the rest of the open lab hours and four undergraduate lab assistants maintain the lab under the supervision of the departmental director of laboratories.

The redesigned course will provide multiple means for achieving the project learning outcomes, Walters says.

Lectures will be de-emphasized and proportionally replaced by Web-based active-learning material, thereby reducing the number of faculty contact hours and saving money. Individualized assistance to students will increase and the course environment will change from one that is predominantly face-to-face to one that is more online.

She says short individual projects will supplement multi-week group projects that incorporate computer-supported collaborative learning on the Web and in lab. The use of online, computer-graded diagnostic pre-quizzes, quizzes and exams will facilitate learning, offer greater feedback to students and increase faculty productivity.

"The overall goal here is to provide much more individualized support than is available in the traditional course," Walters says.

In order to offer more effective technical support for the course and the lab, graduate teaching assistants will be replaced with undergraduate learning assistants who have proven to be very good at peer instruction. The graduate teaching assistants will be reassigned to work with advanced computer-science students with whom they tend to work more effectively.

Walters points out that while a prime motivation in redesigning CSE 101 is to increase student learning through more hands-on, one-to-one learning opportunities, she and her team expect the course to save the department at least $65,000 per semester if course enrollment remains stable, and even more if enrollment increases.

"Some of the savings result from the fact that instructors will have to spend less time on the course, freeing them for research or other activities, which is great for overworked faculty," Walters says.

"The largest portion of the savings, however, arise from the reduction in actual dollars spent by the department in mounting the course," she adds. "The 'freed funds' will then be available for other activities the department values."

Walters says the proposed changes in CSE 101 were informed by research in computer education that includes the report of a two-year, education-labor-industry panel funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council, as well as a 1997 Cornell University survey and focus group in which students said they learned computer literacy skills most efficiently and effectively through trial and error and in a credit-bearing classes.

In addition to Walters, the UB project team includes lecturers Debra Burhans and Carl Alphonce, and Helene Kershner, lecturer and assistant chair, all of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Thomas Shuell, professor of education and director of the UB Center for Educational Resources and Technology (CERT).