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* Department of Biology, Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis, 723 W. Michigan Street, Indianapolis IN 46202; and ** Department of Physics, United States Air Force Academy, 2354 Fairchild Drive, Colorado Springs Colorado 80840
Submitted November 21, 2003; Accepted December 12, 2003
Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) is a teaching and learning approach that combines the best features of traditional in-class instruction with the communication and resource potential available via the Web. We describe here how JiTT can be used to teach biology to undergraduate and graduate level students, both science majors as well as nonscience majors. A key characteristic of JiTT is the creation of a feedback loop between the classroom and the Web using Internet "Warm Up" assignments that are due prior to class time. By examining student responses to Warm Up exercises before class, faculty members can determine the level of understanding, prior knowledge, and misconceptions that students bring to class. Classroom time can then be spent addressing these misconceptions while discussing course content. In class Cooperative Learning exercises reinforce course content in an informal group setting. Other features of JiTT, such as "What is Biology Good For," make clear the relevance of specific concepts in biology in society and increase student motivation. Assessment results have been positive, including decreased attrition rates, increases in student attitudes, interactivity, study habits, and cognitive gains in classrooms using JiTT.
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WHAT IS JiTT AND WHAT IS IT DESIGNED TO ACCOMPLISH? |
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The essence of JiTT is the feedback loop between the Web and the classroom (Figure 1). Faculty use the Internet to post course materials and Web-based Warm Up assignments before class, and students use materials on the Web to prepare for each class. The faculty member in turn uses student responses to create an interactive classroom environment that emphasizes active learning and cooperative problem solving and decreases the use of traditional lecture. Further exploration of selected topics occurs after class in the form of "What is (Biology) Good For?" activities that highlight the relevance of course material to the student's lives. JiTT is particularly useful in large enrollment courses, for commuting or part-time students, and in any case in which a student's first allegiance is not necessarily to the course, but may be competing with the student's existing job, family, and personal responsibilities (Novak et. al 1999).
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OVERVIEW: WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH LITERATURE SAY ABOUT HOW STUDENTS LEARN SCIENCE? |
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Current research on learning indicates that all new learning depends on the learner's prior knowledge and current state of understanding. If students' initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts they are taught, or...they may revert to their preconceptions outside of the classroom. (NRC 2000)
This theory of learning, termed `constructivism,' was developed by Piaget and others and is well-supported in the research literature, as recently reviewed (NRC, 2000; Bybee, 2002). Prior knowledge is defined as a combination of a learner's preexisting attitudes, experiences, and knowledge (Kujawa and Huske, 1995). Many times, prior knowledge includes misconceptions, defined as intuitive but incorrect interpretations or misunderstandings of an idea, concept, or process (Fisher et al., 1986; Rochelle, 1995). Constructivism emphasizes that new concepts cannot be learned if alternate models already exist in a student's mind, and finds that new concepts are best learned when teachers uncover and address the prior knowledge and misconceptions that their students bring to class with them. (NRC 2000, Committee on Undergraduate Science Education 1997).
Learning requires prompt feedback: A large body of research has shown that learning proceeds primarily from prior knowledge, as described above, but also is best achieved when students are provided opportunities for formative assessment— feedback on their prior knowledge so that they can adjust or clarify their thinking (AAAS 1989, NRC 2000). However, in Learning Science and the Science of Learning (2002), Mestre and Cocking state that:
Largely missing from science classrooms, particularly large lecture classes, is formative assessment, which is intended to provide feedback during learning exercises so that students can have an opportunity to revise and improve their thinking and instructors can tailor instruction appropriately.
Feedback is most helpful to student learning when students have time to reflect on the feedback and make adjustments in their thinking to improve or clarify their understanding of subject material. Formative assessment gives students an opportunity for practice with concepts in preparation for a graded examination (summative assessment), when they will be asked to show what they have learned at the end of a set of course materials.
JiTT Combines Research-based Learning Strategies
A fundamental advantage of JiTT is that it provides a simple and
straightforward way to have students and faculty participate in all of these
learning strategies. The use of JiTT Web technology is simply one way to
achieve these recommendations to promote the development of critical thinking,
active learning and cooperative learning skills, and give quick and specific
feedback to students. In addition, JiTT incorporates other recommendations for
effective teaching and learning, by encouraging frequent, short study sessions
when not in class, increasing the amount of contact between faculty and
students, encouraging classroom attendance and participation and connecting
the course content to the real world (relevance).
(Chickering and Gamson 1987,
National Research Council,
1996).
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HOW JiTT IS USED IN TWO CLASSROOMS: CONTEMPORARY BIOLOGY N100 AND BIOTECHNOLOGY 540 |
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While we will show here the way JiTT is used in Biology at IUPUI, we stress that faculty can tailor any of the following aspects of JiTT to best meet their own course needs. In fact, the way JiTT is actually implemented in Biology as described here is somewhat different from the way JiTT was originally described (Novak et al., 1999). The most important goal of JiTT is for faculty to help engage the students in the course content, and to help students achieve mastery of the subject through active learning, constructivism, and prompt feedback, using the technology as a lever to achieve these goals, and not as an end in itself (Chickering and Ehrmann 1996).
There are four common features of both Contemporary Biology and Biotechnology. The first is to use the Web to create a Dynamic Syllabus. The syllabus is on-line and updated weekly throughout the semester. New Web material is posted each Friday, at which point students can access the coming week's lecture outlines and Web assignments. As the cycle repeats itself throughout the semester, the students see the syllabus evolve as new links to course material and assignments are added. Figure 2 shows the home page and syllabus for Contemporary Biology, with icons linking the syllabus to the various course components, such as Lecture Notes, Warm Ups, and "What is Biology Good For?"
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The third feature of both Contemporary Biology and Biotechnology is an Interactive Classroom session. Typically, a modified lecture-discussion is done for the first 3rd of the class, incorporating student Warm Up responses as described in the next section, followed by a Cooperative Learning exercise, consisting of collaborative group work and discussion. This is followed by a second lecture discussion in the last third of the class.
A final feature that is used in Contemporary Biology only are optional "What is Biology Good For?" assignments, short essay that highlights the relevance of biology in everyday life. These extra credit assignments involve a small amount of internet research and are due the Friday following that week's classes.
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WARM UP ASSIGNMENTS: THE STARTING POINT IN THE JiTT FEEDBACK LOOP |
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How Are Warm Up Questions Written?
A Warm Up question usually presents a situation that students are likely to
be somewhat familiar with and requires students to speculate or develop a
hypothesis before forming the answer. Students typically reveal, through
writing the answer to the Warm Up question, ideas (and misconceptions) based
on both their prior knowledge of the subject—from high school or earlier
classroom experiences, from other college courses, or from the
media—with new information gathered from reading the textbook or lecture
notes. Since Warm Up exercises are primarily intended to uncover student prior
knowledge, we typically do not question students on direct factual information
found in the textbook. Instead, we ask questions that start with open-ended
prompts such as:
"What is the difference between...?""Why do you think...?"
"Estimate how many...."
"What happens if...?"
"What determines...?"
"In your own words, explain..."
In some cases, Warm Up questions can be designed to target concepts that are known from the research literature to be associated with specific misconceptions by students. For instance, many undergraduate students have significant misconceptions about concepts such as evolution and natural selection (Bishop and Anderson, 1990; Hensen and Finley, 1996; Lord and Marino, 1993; Lawson and Thompson, 1988), photosynthesis and respiration (Haslam and Treagust, 1987; Hazel and Prosser, 1994), osmosis and diffusion (Jensen et al., 1996; Odom and Barrow, 1995; Westbrook and Marek, 1991), and understanding the biochemical basis of "dominant versus recessive" traits (Heim, 1991; Longden, 1982). For concepts such as these, significant misconceptions can be anticipated in student responses to Warm Up questions and even categorized into fairly predictable responses.
In other cases, an instructor might want to probe for student prior knowledge on concepts that do not have a strong base of information about existing misconceptions. In such a case, we have found it useful to write Warm Up questions based on categories described in the classic article by Arons (1979) that describes the reasoning capacities that faculty expect of college students. Figure 4 shows a sampling of Warm Up questions that have been used in both Contemporary Biology and Biotechnology that fall into one of the categories described by Arons (1979).
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In both biology classes at IUPUI, Warm Up responses are due 3 h before class time. (Any time period before class time can be chosen that is convenient for the faculty member and the students answering the Warm Ups.) Having an assignment due before class time has an added benefit—it compels the student to do the readings and look at the chapter material so that students come to class prepared, increasing their participation in class discussions and cooperative learning exercises.
Full points (3 points per Warm up assignment) are given to all students who respond on time—Warm Up responses are not graded initially as right or wrong since the material has not yet been discussed in class. The answers do not have to be complete, or even correct. In fact, partially correct responses are the most useful in starting classroom discussion, as described in the next section.
If a faculty member prefers to assign a grade to the students `warm up responses, we have developed a way to score student responses to Warm Up responses, based on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 representing "no formal understanding" of the question to 4 representing "complete formal understanding" of the subject, based on a rubric developed by de Caprariis et al (2001). For more details on scoring Warm Ups, including actual student responses to different Warm Up questions, see the recent paper by Marrs et al (2003), the archive of Warm Up exercises in biology, including selected student responses at, or the Warm Up scoring rubric at http://www.biology.iupui.edu/biocourses/N100/warmupscoringrubric.html.
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WARM UP RESPONSES: SYNCHRONIZING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE WITH CLASSROOM DISCUSSION |
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Once we identify a few points that need to be further clarified in that day's class, based on reading a sample of student responses, we determine where to adjust the upcoming classroom lesson in response to the student submissions "Just in Time," and decide how much time to devote to a concept that was to be discussed that day. Should the majority of the class appear to be confused on a particular Warm Up question, more time can be planned to clarify this concept in class. Should the majority of the class appear to understand a concept, more time can be spent in class discussing other concepts.
Just before class time, we select two to four Warm Up responses for each question that can be used as a starting point for addressing that day's content, and copy and paste these responses into a page of comments. This page can be uploaded immediately to the course Web page, or a transparency can be made and shown in class.
How To "Spin" Student Warm Up Responses in Class
An important feature of JiTT is that students actively participate in a
class that is based on their prior knowledge, while still including
all the content the faculty member was planning for that day's discussion.
Student responses to the Warm Up questions are shown and discussed where
appropriate in the lecture or discussion. There are many ways the student
excerpts can be used in class, as shown in
Figure 5. Incomplete answers
are often the best for stimulating an active classroom discussion. Students
can be asked, as a class, to extend answers beyond what is shown to
make the student responses more complete, to expand the answers to a
new situation, or to compare two answers to the same question that
differ significantly. Student Warm Up responses are thus used to provide quick
and specific feedback to students, by using their own responses as a
springboard to develop subject material presented to class. Thus, JiTT
provides a simple way to provide continuous formative assessment to students,
giving students time to review their thought processes, and to revise their
thinking if needed.
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INTERACTIVE LECTURE: COOPERATIVE LEARNING AND DISCUSSION |
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Many of these Cooperative Learning exercises come from the book Cooperative Learning: Making Connections in General Biology (Bres and Weisshaar, 2000). This soft cover book contains about 100 hands-on, cooperative learning activities for biology students (majors or nonmajors) that are easily done in the classroom, typically in 10–15 min or less. The book includes activity worksheets correlated to the content of many standard general biology textbooks, with sections covering cell structure and function, mitosis and meiosis, evolution, genetics, and more. For faculty who may be uncertain of how cooperative learning might be implemented in their classrooms, particularly in a large lecture hall classroom, an instructor's manual is available which not only includes answers to the cooperative learning activities but also includes tips for incorporating aspects of cooperative learning and group work into a course.
In Contemporary Biology at IUPUI, informal groups of two to four students work together for 10–15 min on these cooperative activities and are given time to ask questions and discuss their answers with other groups. In this way, students who continue to have difficulty with a concept can get clarification while class is still in session. Since Contemporary Biology is held in a less-than-ideal setting for group work (fixed, auditorium-style seating), students are not assigned into groups, but work informally with people who are next to them, or in rows in front of behind them. While students are sometimes hesitant at the beginning of the semester to work with other students, they quickly come to enjoy the break in lecture and welcome the chance practice working with concepts we are discussing in class. Over 94% of students in one semester of N100 (n = 184) reported that the cooperative learning exercises were "highly useful" or "very useful" in promoting understanding of the concepts discussed in class, as scored on a Lickert Scale.
We have found two other benefits of the cooperative learning exercises that are not directly related to facilitating understanding of course content. One is that the cooperative learning exercises foster student-to-student interaction, and many times result in the formation of study groups outside of class, an important factor for student success that is often difficult to establish on an urban campus. A second is that, if graded, the cooperative learning exercises strongly promote classroom attendance. In Contemporary Biology, two Cooperative Learning exercises are done per week (one per class). Each exercise that is graded is worth 3 points each, for a total of only 45 points for the semester (<8% of the total points in the class). However, only one of the two exercises done per week is graded; the other is discussed and corrected in class but is not turned in and does not contribute to the students' grade. Students do not necessarily know which of the two weekly exercises will be graded, and as a result typically attend both classes per week. As a result, Contemporary Biology has a very high rate of classroom attendance. In a class of usually more than 200 students, more than 85% of the class is in attendance—with an average of 170 students per class session, an almost doubling of the numbers of students attending class before cooperative learning exercises were implemented.
It is fairly straightforward to tailor Cooperative Learning exercises to any biology class by looking for simple activities in lab manuals, student study guides, or on the internet for activities that might be done to make a lecture class more interactive. The benefits of cooperative learning in teaching cell biology, and excellent tips for incorporating cooperative learning into biology classes has been recently reviewed in Cell Biology Education by Tanner et al (2003). Cooperative learning has been strongly recommended by the AAAS as part of good practice in teaching science. As recommended in Science for All Americans (AAAS, 1989) science should be taught in a way that is consistent with the way that science is done—by inquiry and collaboration, working with real data.
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"WHAT IS BIOLOGY GOOD FOR?" EXERCISES: EXTENDING THE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE |
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To introduce these extra-curricular topics and enhance student motivation
(Gavrin and Novak 1999), JiTT
uses a final optional assignment, called "What is (Biology) Good
For?" (each discipline, of course, having its own version of the
"Good For" essay). In biology at IUPUI, these essays are only used
in N100, the course for non-science majors,
Figure 6 shows a listing of
Good Fors used in Contemporary Biology. The Good For essays provide a
reasonable introduction to a subject, typically in 
1,000 words and a few
figures, followed by 3 research questions for which students may earn 3 points
of "extra credit," for a total of 30 points for the semester (out
of 600 points total). This small amount of credit, however, is enough to
achieve considerable participation. In a given week, >75% of the students
of the students submit responses to the optional Good For essays, which are
due the Friday after that week's classes.
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Often, a controversy or an interesting history behind the subject of a Good For is intriguing to many students, and a topic of before-class conversation in the classroom that week. One of the most popular "What is Biology Good For?" essays concerns the use of the Biotechnology drug Epogen, a life-saving drug that has revolutionized life for patients suffering from kidney disease or the effects of chemotherapy. In itself, the development of this drug and its effect on patients' lives is an interesting story, but additional controversies about "Epo" blood doping by athletes and the reluctance of Medicare to subsidize the complete cost of this drug makes for many interesting Web responses and student conversations. Figure 7 shows a portion of this Good For assignment.
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Student reaction to the Good For essays is extremely favorable. When asked to rate the Good For assignments, over 90% of the students questioned reported that the Good Fors made them understand the relevance of science to their lives (n = 170). Helping students, particularly nonscience majors, to understand the relevance recommended in the as a basis for developing scientific understanding and scientific literacy (National Research Council, 1996).
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ASSESSMENT: EFFECT OF JiTT ON STUDENT LEARNING AND STUDENT SUCCESS |
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JiTT Provides Ongoing Formative Assessment to Students
JiTT provides an excellent way to give students feedback on their
understanding before taking a test for a grade. By examining students' Warm Up
responses as "works in progress" and providing quick and specific
feedback during class, and allowing for in-class cooperative active learning,
students are given many opportunities to explore their own thought processes
about a particular concept, and revise their thinking, if necessary. In
questioning three semesters of students, 87% of students in N100 rated the
class discussions of Warm Up responses "very useful to learning the fine
points" of a concept (n = 485), and >94% of students in one
semester of N100 (n = 184) reported that the cooperative learning
exercises were "highly useful" or "very useful" in
promoting understanding of the concepts discussed in class, as scored on a
Lickert Scale.
JITT Increases Student Success as Measured by Course Retention Rates
Introductory courses in biology, as well as some upper level courses that
are more conceptual or theoretical in nature (for example, genetics), commonly
have large numbers of students who do not perform well in class, and who
either withdraw from the class (W), or receive either a D or an F for their
semester grade. A common goal for faculty and for a university is to
successfully retain more students without changing or simplifying the course
content, reducing the number of students who leave the course with a D, F, or
W. In physics, use of JiTT has resulted in a 33% DFW rate being lowered to 19%
using JiTT, meaning that 81% of the students will complete the course with a
grade of A, B, or C. Since implementing JiTT in contemporary biology, the DFW
rate has decreased from 27% to 20%; meaning that 80% of the students taking
N100 will now complete the course with a grade of A, B, or C.
JiTT Improves Class Preparation
To make the best use of in-class time, many instructors would agree that it
is important for students to come to class prepared. In a JiTT
classroom–and indeed in any classroom that is not taught using a
traditional lecture format–the value of the class depends on the quality
of the participation. When taking a JiTT course, students are told that we,
their professors, will come into class expecting that they will have read the
notes and the pages in the book to become familiar with new terms and concepts
for the day. To determine whether students changed or improved their
likelihood of class preparation as a result of using JiTT, we asked students
three questions to determine whether they were preparing for class
(Table 1). We asked
students three questions: (1) Do you read the Web notes before class?
(2) Do you do the readings from the text before class? (3) Do you do
read the textbook or the class notes (if provided) before your other
classes? The results in Table 1
show that only 50% of the students who were scoring in the an A, B, or C
range after the third exam in Contemporary Biology self-reported that they
read the textbook and notes before their non-JiTT classed, whereas 75% of
students who were scoring in the an A, B, or a C range reported preparing for
class in Contemporary Biology. Students who were not doing well in the class,
scoring in the D or F range after the third exam of the semester, also
self-reported that they were not preparing for class. It is likely that this
lack of preparation, as well as other factors relating to their personal
circumstances, was negatively affecting their course performance.
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JiTT Improves Student Study Habits
Developing good study habits is one of the most effective ways to succeed
in college. Research has shown that students learn more efficiently and retain
information longer when they study regularly, and retain much less information
from a single, intensive study session
(NRC, 2000;
Holloway, 2000;
Bybee, 2002; Kirkland, 1979;
Hoover, 2002).
`Cramming'—a single, intensive study session that saturates the
short-term memory with information before an exam—is a technique most
college students will use at times, but unfortunately, it is not an efficient
way to acquire or retain knowledge
(Holloway, 2000;
Bybee, 2002; Kirkland, 1979;
Hoover, 2002). We wanted to
determine whether Warm Ups made a significant difference in student study
skills, making it easier for students to study in shorter, more frequent study
sessions. We asked students to report whether they crammed for exams in
Contemporary Biology versus their other, non-JiTT classes. As shown in
Table 2, 40% of A students, 65%
of B and C students and 70% of D and F students self report that they cram for
exams in their non-JiTT classes. However, only 16% of those same A students
felt the need to cram for N100. Students receiving a B or a C also showed an
improvement in their study skills (with <31% and 44%, respectively, still
feeling like they needed to cram). About 70% of students who were receiving
poor grades in the class (D or F) still felt the need to cram whether they
were in a JiTT class or not. The lack of effect on these students' study
skills, combined with their lack of preparation for the class as described
above, indicates that many of these students most likely lacked either the
study habits, the motivation, or the time needed to succeed in a college
classroom.
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But Are They Learning? JiTT Increases Cognitive Gains in Biology
In physics, students from JiTT classrooms showed significant and measurable
gains in achievement on a standardized test in Physics, the Force Concept
Inventory (Hestenes et al.,
1992). A similar tool, the Biology Concept Inventory, is currently
under development (Klymkowsky
2003), but is not yet in use. To measure the effect of JiTT on
cognitive gains in biology, we have used the results from a 20-question
preclass and postclass test, calculating the average normalized gain as
described (Hake, 2002;
reviewed in Dancy and Beichner,
2002). In doing this analysis within individual N100 classes, we
found that students tended to show an average normalized gain of 15% on
test questions about concepts that were discussed in class, but not
necessarily reinforced by any additional class activities, and showed an
average normalized gain of 21% on test questions that were reinforced by
back of the book homework problems. However, students tended to show an
average normalized gain of 52% on test questions that were reinforced by
either Warm Up questions or Cooperative Learning activities, and showed an
average normalized gain of 60% on test questions reinforced by both Warm
Up questions or Cooperative Learning activities
(Marrs 2003).
Students prefer JiTT to traditional lecture classes, based on course attitude surveys, anonymous end-of-course evaluations, and student focus groups:
The Web page was great. I've never had a class run from the Web before and it was really neat. All of the different categories (Warm up, Good Fors, notes) were really great and made the class fun and interesting and different.I enjoy reading the "What is Biology Good For" assignments, I learn a lot of details that I probably would not have known. The Good Fors help me to connect biology to the real world and it is very incredible. I have not yet had another class that helped connect the subject with the real world.
I think that the Cooperative Learning exercises help me to learn the material. They are a mini review for me!! They definitely help break up the tedium of lecture. They are wonderful!! Plus I like the fact that they can kind of take attendance for those of us who show up to class everyday!
One of the best things about class in my opinion is that the information is usually so current. More than once a week I see things we have talked about. Often they are major news stories and it is a good feeling to be current to the advances in science and know what we have done is relevant to life stories.
I LOVE the Good Fors! I like the extra credit and it is great to see how biology is used in the real world. It is always frustrating when teachers can't answer the question "When am I ever going to use this?" Thanks for being so helpful!
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CONCLUSION: ADVANTAGES IN USING JiTT IN TEACHING AND LEARNING BIOLOGY |
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Finally, JiTT is also consistent with many of the procedures and practices recommended for effective undergraduate teaching. Five of the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" are directly addressed by JiTT: increased student-faculty contact, active learning techniques, prompt feedback, cooperation among students, and time on task, with the other two being indirect effects of JiTT (respecting diverse ways of learning, communicating high expectations).
Getting Started with JiTT Is Simple
Faculty interested in JiTT but unfamiliar with posting course materials to
the Web can start slowly; by learning how to implement JiTT into a classroom
in small pieces, faculty will become more comfortable with using the Web as a
teaching tool in science. Very little technical knowledge of Web page
construction is needed for faculty to implement all aspects in JiTT into a
course, and in today's Web-savvy society, access to and familiarity with the
Web is almost a given for college students.
Many universities have course management software like BlackBoard, WebCT, or Angel that provide an ideal format for JiTT, allowing faculty to not only post notes, announcements, or news, but also set up "Discussion Forums" that can be used as templates for Warm Up and Good For assignments. Course management software often has the advantage of automatically grading assignments that come as discussion forums, saving faculty from needing to manually grade Warm Ups or Good For assignments, and in some cases can keep a database of questions from which faculty can easily select or customize assignments (for example, see discussion by Ledder 2002). If course management software is unavailable, interested faculty can register at a new site (http://www.jittWeb.org). This site was developed at IUPUI for Indianapolis high school teachers who are using JiTT in their science classes, but is free to all users within the JiTT community. This site allows JiTT users to generate Warm Up forms to post on their home server, retrieve and grade student responses on-line, and import graded student responses into an Excel spreadsheet. Please contact author Kathy Marrs for more information about using jittWeb.org. For multiday workshops about JiTT, The National Science Foundation and Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) offer summer workshops in Just in Time teaching. Feel free to contact either authors of this manuscript for more information.
Is It Worth the Extra Time Needed To Do JiTT?
A final consideration is time. Faculty juggling teaching, managing a
research lab and writing grants, plus other university obligations often feel
that they have little time to invest in modifying their teaching, particularly
when excellence in teaching may not be rewarded as highly as excellence in
research. However, as the primary mission of any university is to promote
learning, courses characterized by a high rate of student success should be
the goal. Fortunately, as described in Shaping the Future: New
Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering,
and Technology, many universities departments, deans, and faculty
colleagues are realizing the need to increase the importance of teaching in
the reward system for faculty who help students learn well
(National Science Foundation,
1996).
JiTT does take more time compared to the way a traditional large enrollment lecture-based class is usually managed. However, we stress again that faculty can tailor any of the following aspects of JiTT to best meet their own course needs and make the most value of the additional time input needed. Web-based Warm Up and Good For assignments that come in just once per week require only an hour of two of faculty time, but have the value of identifying a large body of prior knowledge from perhaps hundreds of students at a time that can be used to inform teaching and learning. Cooperative Learning exercises may take time `away' from traditional lecture, but have the advantage of requiring students to work in a cooperative, active learning atmosphere, getting practice with working directly with data analysis and confronting any difficulties they may be having with the course material while they are in class with faculty help available. In addition, they have the advantage of greatly improving classroom attendance, which can be very poor in many traditional classes.
A final comment about time needed for grading: We recommend that faculty take full advantage of course management features like automatic grading of Web-based assignments into the course gradebook, so that valuable time does not have to be spen t entering student scores manually into a spreadsheet. If grades must be computed or entered manually (as with Cooperative Learning exercises), a student grader employed for an hour or two a week can take care of all of the grading used in JiTT. The most important goal, however, regardless of how many of the features of JiTT are used, is to engage the students and help them achieve mastery of the subject through active learning, constructivism, and prompt feedback. JiTT courses do require faculty to invest a bit more time than they might in a traditional lecture class, but the investment of time pays off in that faculty are using strategies that are strongly recommended from research on learning by the National Science Foundation, AAAS, and other national organizations for effective undergraduate teaching, resulting in increased student gains and a more interactive classroom experience for faculty and students alike.
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Each of these Websites is available to the public, is not password-protected, and is available in standard HTML format. There are no restrictions on the use of materials on these Web pages by educators or by nonprofit institutions as long the content not modified and proper copyright acknowledgement is retained.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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Corresponding author. E-mail address:
kmarrs{at}iupui.edu.
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TOPWHAT IS JiTT AND...OVERVIEW: WHAT DOES THE...HOW JiTT IS USED...WARM UP ASSIGNMENTS: THE...WARM UP RESPONSES: SYNCHRONIZING...INTERACTIVE LECTURE: COOPERATIVE..."WHAT IS BIOLOGY GOOD...ASSESSMENT: EFFECT OF JiTT...CONCLUSION: ADVANTAGES IN USING...ACCESSING MATERIALSREFERENCES |
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