E-Learning Tools for STEM
October 6, 2009
You'd think that the instructors who teach high school and university-level math and hard sciences (or STEM fields) would be quick to pick up new technologies and be early adopters of e-learning. But in many of my interactions with administrators, what I actually hear is this: "Faculty from almost every discipline are interested in using new technologies and teaching online, except the people in math, science, and engineering."
Sure, there are individuals here and there who have taken the lead in developing high-quality online courses for the hard sciences, but on many campuses, it's people in the math and science departments who are the most resistant to adopt e-learning.
It's not that these faculty members don't want to teach online; it's that they can't see how to do it in their discipline.
From my own experiences leading workshops at campuses across the country, I've found two key things help convince STEM instructors to become interested, if not enthusiastic, about online education:
1. The right tools (I name six of the most important ones below).2. Discipline-specific examples of how to use tools online.
While some tools can be used universally by instructors in all disciplines, the technical fields often need more specialized tools to get the job done. It can be very difficult for instructors who spend much of their time teaching in the realm of graphs, diagrams, models, and equations to understand how a pedagogical technique from the arts and humanities could possibly transfer to their discipline.
Here are six tools that are, in my opinion, absolute necessities to get an instructor up and running successfully.
1. Tablets
Put a tablet computer into the hands of any faculty member from the technical fields that you would like to see teaching online. They will love it. 
However, it's not enough to just to hand them a tablet and hope for the best. The tablet is not truly powerful technology until the user experiments with colored pens, highlighters, and the ability to print other documents into the tablet software.
Most tablets come with a software package to make the tablet an effective writing tool. Windows Journal or Microsoft OneNote are the most common. Peripheral tablets, such as Wacom's Bamboo tablet ($69-$99), can also be used if the funds aren't available for a tablet computer.
An open-source tablet program called Jarnal can be used in conjunction with peripheral tablets and any computer platform. Math instructor Daniel Kopsas created a series of handy Jarnal tutorials that I recommend.
2. Recording & Editing Software
In technical fields, instructors will need to record short video lessons to provide guidance and expertise about problem solving.
Ideally, the instructor should have adequate equipment to make a recording during a live, face-to-face class. My videos from live classes turn out better because they include questions asked by students, and as I read their faces, I tend to add extra commentary or explanation that I might otherwise have not.
These class-length videos must be edited down to no more than 10 minutes each to be effective, which takes time and training. I advise administrators and trainers to wait until several lectures have been recorded before teaching the instructor how to edit video, as the training is much more effective when the teachers are working on their own recordings and have several to practice on.
3. Jing
Jing, a free program built by TechSmith, has made more of a difference in my online courses than any other. It allows the user to capture screenshots or record short videos, and then share these quickly and painlessly with other people via the Internet.
In the technical fields, teaching tends to center around solving problems (chemistry, physics, math), and it can be difficult to mimic online the student experience of going to a professor's office and getting help solving a specific problem. With Jing, my students can send me a link to an annotated screenshot of a problem they are struggling with--and the work they've tried so far. Then I can respond by recording a 1- to 2-minute video with some hints, and send them a link to the video.
Once my students got the hang of using Jing, they started using it to help each other, posting questions about specific problems, and posting hints toward solutions to each other in both screen capture and video form.
Here's an example of how collaboration happens using Jing (a second example is shown further down the page):
4. Equation Software and Training
You may find this surprising, but most instructors in math and sciences have never received any formal training to use the equation editor in Word, MathType, LaTeX, ChemDraw, or any other equation software. Most instructors were simply handed some software, and that was the end of that.
What's worse, most instructors think they get by just fine, when in fact they are limping along with minimal skills. Imagine two-finger hunt-and-peck typing versus touch typing.
Not knowing how to use equation-writing software is a significant barrier to getting STEM teachers teaching online. If instructors perceive that creating equations in documents is too time-consuming, they are unlikely to try teaching online, where typing an equation is often the quickest form of communication.
5. Synchronous Communication System
To hold online office hours, instructors will need a system with a decent and reliable whiteboard. I emphasize reliable because the whiteboards I've seen in many learning management systems are subject to repeated crashing.
Before you invest in an expensive webinar-type system, there are two systems that provide free levels of use that will do the job for online office hours: WizIQ and Vyew.
Vyew is particularly interesting because you can set it up so that the "vyewbook" continues to be available for student collaboration even if the instructor isn't there.
6. Online Homework System
Since much of the learning in STEM subjects happens when students try working through problems, there needs to be some mechanism for encouraging this to happen.
Many instructors envision spending thousands of hours programming problems into their LMS, but most publishers now provide online homework systems with the textbook problems pre-programmed. And, the systems generate algorithmic problems so that each student has a slightly different version.
When students ask for help on discussion boards, they have to talk about the problem they were assigned and what they tried. They cannot simply ask other students for the answer. Interestingly, students on a discussion board appear to be no more willing to "do the problem" for another student than an
instructor would be.
Toys for STEM Instructors
Those are the tools that instructors will have to be trained on in order to create an effective online course in a STEM discipline. However, to entice instructors to try first try out these tools, you'll want to dangle in front of them the sexier tools and a few other more discipline-specific web resources.
Without exception, Jing and tablet computers have created the biggest stir in the workshops I've taught. Instructors who have never imagined teaching an online course before find their heads turned by the ease of using a tablet to record their lessons.
Here are some other resources that instructors just can't resist.
Wolfram Demonstrations Wolfram Research (the company that makes Mathematica) has amassed a collection of over 5,000 interactive demonstrations in mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry, computing, and other subjects. The Wolfram Demonstrations run on Mathematica Player (a free download). You must download the individual demonstrations before you can interact with them. Often I will use one of the demonstrations in a video, moving the slider bars as I discuss the changes we are seeing in the graph.
Digital Libraries for Math and Science
Check out MathDL, NSDL (specifically, try iLumina for science and math), NLVM, Science Literacy Maps, and AMSER. All these sites archive interactive web materials and videos by subject area.
Video Collections
There are many web resources that house clever collections of videos that can be embedded in online courses to add a little flavor to the mix. TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) publishes video recordings of conference talks-- a few per week. Many of these talks feature experts in their field and cutting-edge research. There are videos featuring physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, biologists, chemists, and engineers (see TED Talks for STEM).
Three other collections of videos that are very good for science are The Periodic Table of Videos (chemistry), Sixty Symbols (physics, math, and astronomy), and HowStuffWorks Science Videos. However, don't ignore the truly fantastic videos on YouTube (many of them student-created). Finding one or two great YouTube gems for a specific discipline can be really enticing (for example, look up "I Will Derive!" for calculus).
TI-SmartView
Graphing calculators are used in most freshman and sophomore-level math courses. Math instructor who teach online have to be able to demonstrate skills on a graphing calculator. TI-SmartView emulates a TI-84 graphing calculator on your computer screen, including a history of key presses and several viewing windows.
There are a few other things you may want to consider as your campus embarks on the journey to put STEM subjects online.
Find a Specialist
To kick off your training, you may have to bring in a specialist. If you've tried before and failed to entice the STEM faculty, a discipline-specific technology specialist is your best bet to get the ball rolling. Look to discipline-specific professional organizations or bloggers for help.
Accessibility
You need to consider how you will make materials accessible when the need arises. Documents containing mathematics can be read aloud by text readers using a new program called MathDAISY. Instructor-recorded videos can be captioned, but to create the scripts for captioning is extremely time-consuming. To give you a rough idea, editing and producing 10 minutes of video can take me up to an hour. To write a script and caption the video myself takes another two hours.
If you seriously expect instructors to do this accessibility work as part of their standard online course prep, then you're not likely to ever convince them to teach online. Perhaps you can utilize a few bored student assistants to do this captioning work (as needed) on your campus.
Computer Labs You will have to install tools in your campus computer labs so that on-campus students can use them, too. Our campus now maintains Jarnal, Jing, and Mathematica Player on all the campus computers.
Update Instructors' Computers
You will have to keep instructor computers and classroom computers updated with the latest versions of the listed tools, as well as web browsers, Flash Player, and other necessary plug-ins.
Lab Work
Depending on the STEM course, you may need to figure out how to "go online" with a lab. To tackle this, look to colleges that have paved the way to find out about discipline-specific software (or at-home lab kits) that might be used.
Learn by Example
You might find it helpful to hook up your instructors with a few discipline-specific blogs that focus on teaching their subject with technology. For an instructor to read about another instructors' experiences can be very powerful for getting over the technology learning curve.
The work of creating an effective online course for a STEM course can be a massive undertaking. Instructors who embark on this journey need the right tools, a lot of training, an ear to bend when they are frustrated, and a strong personal learning network to support them.
About the Author
Maria H. Andersen is a math instructor at Muskegon Community College, where she regularly teaches Calculus I and II online. Her educational background includes degrees in chemistry and biology, and she has taken many of the core engineering courses. Andersen writes a blog about math, technology, and teaching at TeachingCollegeMath.com.
Additional Resources from TeachingCollegeMath
- Jing Tutorials for Students
- MathType Tutorials for Instructors
- How Tablets Enhance the Math
- Online Course Design for Mathematics
- Everybody Teaches, Everybody Learns
- 2008 Top 10 Technology Tools for Math
- Starting from Scratch
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