J Sci Educ Technol (2007) 16:507–514 DOI 10.1007/s10956-007-9071-5
Just-in-Time Teaching Exercises to Engage Students in an Introductory-Level Dinosaur Course Laura A. Guertin Æ Sarah E. Zappe Æ Heeyoung Kim
Published online: 6 October 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract The Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) technique allows students to be engaged in course material outside of the classroom by answering web-based questions. The responses are summarized and presented to students in class with a follow-up active learning exercise. College students enrolled in an introductory-level general education geoscience course were surveyed over a two-semester period on their engagement level during lecture and perceived learning of course content. Data show that students are able to reflect on their prior knowledge and construct new knowledge with weekly graded JiTT exercises. Despite increasing and competing pressures outside of the classroom, students reported increased learning and engagement in a course with required weekly assignments. Keywords Just-in-Time Teaching Dinosaur Pedagogy Introductory-level courses
Introduction At colleges and universities nationwide, introductory-level general education science courses are filled with students whose primary motivation for registering is to satisfy a graduation requirement. Many students consider these courses a low priority and do not invest significant time and energy into engaging in course content outside of class. L. A. Guertin (&) Earth Science, Penn State Delaware County, 25 Yearsley Mill Road, Media, PA 19063, USA e-mail:
[email protected] S. E. Zappe H. Kim Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16801, USA
The students enrolled in general education science courses are not usually science majors, yet the general education courses serve an important role as students’ first and last introduction to fields such as geoscience. Certainly an overarching goal in general education courses is for these students to obtain a certain level of science literacy. ‘‘Literacy’’ in this case does not just mean to ‘‘know’’ material through remembering and repeating information but to be able to find and use information (Simon 1996). The challenge for general education instructors is to find a way to help students develop the intellectual tools and learning strategies needed to acquire the knowledge that allows students to think constructively about science. Students need to be kept connected to the course content throughout the semester so that they become comfortable and familiar with the subject matter and application of course material. Ideally, this will contribute to a student’s more basic understanding of principles of learning that can assist them in becoming self-sustaining, lifelong learners (NRC 2000). This challenge is a particularly significant one at Penn State Delaware County. Located twenty miles outside of Philadelphia, Penn State Delaware County serves primarily as a 2-year feeder school to the main campus of Pennsylvania State University. With an approximate enrollment of 1,700 students in general education and entrance-to-majors courses, co-author Guertin is the only geoscience faculty member on campus and teaches introductory-level generaleducation geoscience and earth science courses to *150 students each academic year. As Penn State Delaware County is a commuter campus, the students have competing stresses and pressures from academics, employment and family. Many students are first-generation college students in their families and commute from as far as 2 h away. Education, although important, is not necessarily a top priority. Students are challenged to find time and
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motivation to complete course readings and think about assignments outside of class, especially for courses that are considered not important to their future. Despite the students’ lack of attention to a general education elective science course, several reports document that students learn science better by being actively engaged instead of passive recipients of lecture and textbook material (NSF 1996; NRC 1999). Many reports document that students who do science and engage in critical thinking, synthesis, and analysis, enjoy science and demonstrate higher academic achievement (e.g., Gottfried et al. 1993; Hake 1998; Keefer 1998). Particularly, the National Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University (1998) reports that students in their freshman and sophomore years need to be challenged to explore intellectual opportunities that can stimulate original thought, independent effort, and reveal the relationships among sciences, social sciences and humanities. Students enter the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not addressed, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom (NRC 2000). Constructivists assume that all knowledge is constructed from previous knowledge, no matter how one is taught. For example, listening to a lecture can involve active attempts to construct new knowledge. ‘‘Teaching by telling’’ can work extremely well, but instructors need to pay attention to students’ interpretations and provide guidance when necessary. Instructors must draw out and work with the preexisting understandings that students bring with them to the classroom. Learning is enhanced when instructors identify the knowledge and beliefs that students bring to class, use this knowledge as a starting point for new instruction, and monitor students’ changing conceptions as instruction proceeds (NRC 2000). This investigation examines if the implementation of a pedagogical technique, Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT), that has its foundations in constructivist theory, can engage students in geoscience content and increase student-reported interest and learning.
Just-in-Time Teaching Technique Novak et al. (1999) developed the JiTT pedagogy to combine active learning and web-based teaching techniques to teach physics. Students are required to complete several multiple choice and/or short answer questions through the Internet outside of class. The online responses are gathered and reviewed by the instructor, with the
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student responses utilized in class to focus lecture content or engage students in discussion. The JiTT approach shares characteristics with other effective teaching methods that aim to facilitate active learning. Kilonsky (2001) used quizzes at the beginning of each class period to prepare students for class and to improve their learning, and Conner-Greene (2000) made use of daily in-class essay quizzes to encourage regular reading of assignments as well as engagement with the class material. Unfortunately, both of these techniques take a large amount of class time. Logistical issues include collecting and grading paper copies, and students with learning disabilities that need extra time. As online homework, paper is eliminated and students can use as much time as they would like or need. Web-based learning allows students to work at their own pace (O’Connell 2001) and convenience (King and Hildreth 2001), and students may be more likely to participate and learn more effectively (Moore and Miller 1996; King and Hildreth 2001). Edwards et al. (2000) showed that information technologies can more effectively motivate and direct students’ outside-the-classroom time, with the technologies strengthening traditional courses by creating opportunities for interactions between faculty members and students and by providing the effective management and structure for a course. Although research has shown the JiTT approach increases learning and improves student attitudes when implemented in college-level physics courses (Mzumara et al. 2001; Novak and Patterson 1998), there exists a paucity of data on the impact of JiTT on student learning in other disciplines. JiTT has been adapted for biology courses (Marrs et al. 2003), statistics courses (Benedict and Anderton 2004), and even history of photography courses (Cookman 2004). Variations of the pedagogical technique exist in geoscience courses. Grove (2002) describes her use of Virtual Voyages in an introductory-level general education oceanography course. Based in San Francisco, Grove designs her weekly online assignments to include realworld data and local examples to which the students can relate. Linneman and Plake (2006) have also explored JiTT in large-enrollment introductory-level geoscience courses. This investigation focuses on the implementation of JiTT in introductory-level general education geoscience courses at a commuter campus. The goal was to measure student engagement and examine their perceived learning in a lecture-only introductory-level course on dinosaurs.
Implementation The JiTT technique was implemented in two semesters of the lecture-only course Dinosaur Extinctions and Other
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Controversies (heretofore referred to as ‘‘Dinosaurs’’). For each course, students were responsible for submitting responses online to weekly assignments, termed DinoBytes. Each assignment consisted of three open-response questions. The responses came from assigned readings in the textbook or online articles posted on the websites of National Geographic, Scientific American, or Discover. The questions were placed in a form created in Macromedia Dreamweaver. The form was placed online through Penn State’s course management software system ANGEL and linked to a Microsoft Access database located on a local server. Students were given until 2 h before class started on Fridays to submit their responses. The 2-h cutoff was to allow the instructor time to review student responses to look for comprehension of material or any misconceptions that needed to be clarified. Each Friday lecture was replaced with a discussion based on student responses and a follow-up active-learning activity. As Friday lectures were transformed to a full class period of discussion and/or a group activity, this meant there was one less day a week the instructor would formally present course content to the students in a traditional lecture format. However, minimal content was sacrificed from the overall course. Most of the DinoByte exercises were based on material that the instructor would have presented on that Friday, whether it be a new topic or extension on a topic introduced earlier in the week. For example, the course spends 1 week on recent international dinosaur discoveries. The DinoByte for that week would focus on the significance of historic international dinosaur finds. The Friday class period had the students brainstorm the logistics of mounting an international expedition and complete a quantitative exercise on how to pack supplies in field vehicles, taking into consideration the weight each truck can hold, the necessary food, water, gasoline, and weight of fossils on the return from the field. The students were responsible for learning the historic exploration component on their own, which was less material the instructor needed to cover in class. Although the quantitative exercise takes more class time than the instructor presenting the correct response up front, the opportunity for engagement is now available for students to work with their peers. The small loss of content is replaced by active classroom learning. In addition, as Dinosaurs is a survey course for non-science majors, it is not as critical to present everything there is to know about dinosaurs, and this content is not necessary for a trailer course that will build upon the information. An example of a weekly JiTT exercise would be a DinoByte on Dinosaur Hunters. Students were given 1 week to prepare and submit responses to three short-answer questions. The questions were designed to challenge students to think on different orders of Bloom’s taxonomy
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(Bloom 1956). Table 1 contains the Dinosaur Hunters DinoByte and sample student responses. The questions in the homework were written to tap different cognitive skills, as defined by Bloom’s cognitive domain. One question asked students to demonstrate knowledge, one question required comprehension, and one required evaluation of the material. After the submission deadline, the responses were shared with the class and displayed on a website created in Dreamweaver that pulled the responses from the database but not the student identity in order to maintain anonymity. The class was asked questions that expanded upon the DinoByte responses, such as, why are the discoveries from the Gobi Desert important? Upon conclusion of the review and discussion, students engaged in a follow-up activity relating to the topic of the week. In this case, students were divided into groups to play the game of six degrees of separation— similar to the Kevin Bacon version where someone can be connected to Kevin Bacon through six movies, but with paleontologists. For example, students had to connect Sir Richard Owen (the British scientist that coined the term ‘‘dinosaur’’) to Jack Horner (a modern-day paleontologist from Montana) through dinosaur species, field sites, museums, etc. The activity was designed to assist students in making historic linkages between the history of paleontology, paleontologists, and locations of significant dinosaur discoveries and displays. The online responses to each DinoByte question were graded on a scale of zero to three, modified from the system used by de Caprariis et al. (2001) (Table 2). The JiTT exercises were worth 30% of the final semester grade. Other instructors make the weekly exercises count for a smaller percentage (10% in Novak and Patterson 1998; \10% in Linneman and Plake 2006; Marrs et al. 2003). Here, DinoBytes were assigned a higher percentage because of prior experience with JiTT exercises in a different course. When JiTT exercises were implemented in a biodiversity and Earth history course at Penn State Delaware County with the grades counting as 10% of the final grade, the responses were short and not detailed. Although not examined in an empirical study, a higher percentage value for JiTT exercises seems to motivate the students to take the questions seriously and put more time and effort into their responses. The purpose of this study is to examine student selfreported engagement level in a general education introductory-level geoscience course. By requiring the students to complete weekly assignments that required researching additional information than what was presented in lecture, this study wanted to determine if students felt connected to the course content and reported a greater understanding of the material. This information is of great value at Penn State Delaware County, with the competing pressures of
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Table 1 DinoByte #8 questions and graded student responses to Question #3 DinoByte #8: Dinosaur Hunters 1. Who was Hatcher (the person)? Was it appropriate for the Smithsonian to name their Triceratops Hatcher? Explain 2. Who has gone on expeditions to areas in central Asia (such as the Gobi Desert)? What are the significant finds to come out of these expeditions? 3. The rivalry of Cope and Marsh, despite how petty and juvenile you think it may have been, was a major motivator behind their enormous number of significant discoveries and other contributions to paleontology. And this Great Bone War brings up an ethical question... did the value of their discoveries outweigh the costs of their war and the methods they used? In other words, did the ends justify the means? Score = 1 • I think it depends on how you feel about knowing the history of the world if you think it is very important then I think the ends did justify the means but if you think it isn’t important than it wasn’t worth it • No I don’t believe so, I think if they worked together they could have made better finds and made better scientific finds Score = 2 • I don’t believe it is ever ethical to betray another human being, and the pity feud which led to a competition that launched paleontology forward, does not justify the deceitfulness of Cope and Marsh. I personally do not feel that it is ever ethical to lie or deceive another person, so to me if the methods are not just, then the results are irrelevant • I feel that the rivalry between Marsh and Cope was important, because they had a lot of discoveries. I felt that the rivalry made them work hard and showed their competitive side. In the end, it seems that Cope endured the most difficulties, because he had lost of his family money, couldn’t fund his digs and no one wanted to publish his work Score = 3 • This question is a difficult one. It is hard to say whether or not the value of their discoveries outweigh the costs of their enmity and other methods used. In the case of Cope and Marsh, considering all the significant discoveries that came from their rivalry, I would have to say that it was worth it. Unfortunately, if it wasn’t for their rivalry many of those discoveries may never have been made. However, I am not suggesting that rivalry is a good motivation. In a perfect world paleontologist should be positively motivated to make discoveries for the sake of discovery and information, not to beat the other paleontologists • I think this is a very interesting question. One side of me wants to say that these two men were merely a product of capitalism in the academic world and got too caught up in pride. In addition, one may argue that their drive for competition sparked public interest and was a necessary step for paleontology. I say this because these men set an example for the rest of the world and academic institutions in how absurd and how out of touch with reality academics could get and how personal motives drive their lives into the ground. The passion learning became more about self, and less about their initial goals in broadening the scope of information available to the general public. I think it was unfortunate that these men both died somewhat ‘‘unhappy.’’ I think these men did not plan on having their academic goals become over-zealous. But I do think that this was an extremely important lesson in history for academics not just in the paleontological world
Table 2 Scoring rubric used to grade DinoByte questions Score 0: Student either completely missed the point of the question or did not submit a response Score 1: Student tried to answer the question but showed minimal accurate knowledge and/or substantial misconceptions about the concept. In addition, this rating reflected responses of students who did not use any information from the readings or lecture notes to answer the question (minimal effort, incorrect answer) Score 2: Student showed some accurate knowledge and use of correct terminology to answer the question; however, the student did not use appropriate information from the readings or lecture notes to answer the question (partially correct, but still incomplete/not fully answered) Score 3: Student answered the question correctly and completely, information was incorporated from the readings or class notes into the response, and the student may have looked for the supporting information in external sources not provided by the instructor
the commuting student population. Could required weekly assignments keep commuting students focused in a general education course outside of their major discipline?
Methods of Assessment The assessment of JiTT integration was measured in two sections of Dinosaurs in Spring 2005 and three sections of Dinosaurs in Fall 2005, with each section having *25
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students enrolled. Co-author Guertin taught all sections in the same classroom both semesters. The classes were 50min in length on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:30AM, 11:30AM, and 1:30PM (fall semester only). Spring 2005 was the first semester the Dinosaurs course was taught, and the JiTT method was introduced upon the first offering. Unfortunately, this does not provide for comparison to how students performed or what their attitudes were toward the course without JiTT. Co-author Guertin decided to implement JiTT right away, as she was
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discouraged by the visible lack of engagement by the students in her other lecture-only courses. It was also not possible to establish a control group with one of the sections being offered each semester. As the campus is a commuter campus, it is not uncommon for students to be delayed during their transit to school due to accidents, car problems, winter weather, etc. Therefore, if a student arrived late on campus, he/she would sit in on a lecture section of a same course that met later in the day. Coauthor Guertin did not want to discourage students from attending a lecture if they were delayed getting to campus, and by having a control group, this would have created an unfair situation to students with transportation issues. A diagnostic survey developed by the instructor was given to all students on the first and last day of class. The diagnostic survey consisted of 30 multiple choice and truefalse questions designed to examine the content knowledge and preconceptions about dinosaurs that students held prior to the course instruction. The same survey was administered at the end of the semester without prior notification to see what knowledge the students retained without studying or preparing for the survey. The questions were written at the lowest level of Bloom’s taxonomic scale, the knowledge level. Students were not allowed to keep a copy of the survey from the beginning of the semester, as the same survey was given at the end of the semester. In addition, students were not provided the correct answers to the survey after taking the survey the first day of classes. Three online surveys were administered to students to gather data on their perceived learning and engagement from the JiTT exercises and follow-up class activities. Students were given the initial survey the first week of classes, a mid-semester survey, and final survey in the Dinosaurs course during Spring 2005 and Fall 2005. The instructor was not allowed to see individual responses, which provided a level of confidentiality and anonymity to the students. Responding to the three surveys was optional, yet students were provided the opportunity to drop their lowest three JiTT weekly grades if they completed all three surveys. Pertinent survey questions with data are presented in Tables 3, 4, 5. To further investigate engagement levels during lectures, students in Fall 2005 were required to fill out a Classroom Engagement Survey, developed at the United States Air Force Academy (E. Hamilton 2005, unpublished data). The survey is a student-reported measure of learner engagement (Table 6). Students were given the survey the first day of classes and asked to reflect and report upon their engagement levels in all of the college courses they had taken to date (no first-semester freshmen were enrolled in any of the sections). The survey was distributed again at the mid-semester point to ask students to report on their engagement level in just the Dinosaur course from the
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beginning of the course to the mid-point. The survey was given one final time at the end of the semester for students to report on their engagement in the Dinosaur course from the mid-semester survey to the end of the semester.
Results The response rate for participating in the diagnostic surveys was moderately high. In the spring of 2005, 44 students completed the pre-survey and post-survey. In the fall of 2005, 53 students completed the pre-survey and the postsurvey. On the diagnostic survey, students scored an average of 39% on the pre-survey in Spring 2005 and 41% in Fall 2005. The scores improved for the post-survey in both semesters, increasing to an average score of 71% in Spring 2005 and 75% in Fall 2005. A paired t-test indicated that the Spring 2005 data scores significantly increased (t = –18.03, p \ 0.000). A significant increase in scores was also found for the Fall 2005 data (t = –21.71, p \ 0.000). For the online student perception surveys, the response rate ranged from 36 to 39 students in the spring 2005 semester and from 49 to 62 in the fall 2005 semester. In both semesters, the majority of students found the DinoBytes and follow-up exercises to be very helpful to their learning (Table 3). They felt the DinoBytes gave them the chance to complete assigned readings and reflect on what they learned in Monday and Wednesday classes. They appreciated the chance to have Friday discussions where the instructor answered their questions, and they learned what other students think about the weekly topics. Students who did not find the DinoBytes to be useful for their learning cited the assignments as ‘‘busy work.’’ Students listed a variety of advantages of the DinoBytes. Many mentioned that the DinoBytes help them to think on their own, reflect on the weeks’ material, and apply the knowledge and concepts from the class (Table 3). Several students mentioned that the DinoBytes force them to pay attention in class and take notes. Most of the students felt that the DinoByte advantages included critical thinking, application of knowledge, and research skills. Most students reported that the DinoBytes not only allow them to identify their misunderstandings about course material, but also encourage them to relate personal experiences and make links to their own backgrounds (Table 5). These are notable data for a course on Dinosaurs, as many of the students admitted at the beginning of the semester that they had never visited a museum with a dinosaur display, and their previous background and knowledge on dinosaurs was grounded primarily on what they had seen on television or in the movies. A total of 69 students completed each administration of The Classroom Engagement Survey. The Classroom
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Table 3 Student perceptions on learning from DinoBytes Question
No help (%)
A little help (%)
Moderate help (%)
Much help (%)
How much did completing DinoByte exercises help your learning?
10.8
10.8
40.5
35.1
4.1
8.2
38.8
34.7
8.1
10.8
27.0
4.1
12.2
26.5
How much did the Friday DinoByte classes help your learning?
Very much help (%)
n
Average
SD
SEM
2.7
37
3.08
1.01
SP05
14.3
49
3.47
0.981
FA05
48.6
5.4
37
3.32
1.03
SP05
32.7
24.5
49
3.61
1.115
FA05
Table 4 Students from Spring 2005 rate how DinoBytes help them with the following Question
No help (%)
A little help (%)
Moderate help (%)
Much help (%)
Very much help (%)
n
Average
SD
Allows me to bring in my own ideas and perceptions about the material
2.8
11.1
33.3
36.1
16.7
36
3.53
1.00
Allows me to reflect on the material more
2.9
5.7
25.7
42.9
22.9
36
3.77
0.97
Helps me to understand the thoughts and perceptions of other students in the class
14.3
14.3
25.7
34.3
11.4
35
3.14
1.24
Table 5 Students from Fall 2005 rate how DinoBytes help them with the following Question
Strongly disagree (%)
Disagree (%)
Neutral (%)
Agree (%)
Strongly agree (%)
n
Average
SD
Completing the DinoBytes helps me to better understand the course material
3.8
7.5
22.6
39.6
26.4
53
3.77
1.05
Completing the DinoBytes helps me see what I do not understand about the course material
5.7
7.5
28.3
39.6
18.9
53
3.58
1.06
Completing DinoBytes makes me feel more responsible for my successes in class
7.7
3.8
19.2
32.7
36.5
52
3.87
1.19
I often try to relate my own personal experiences when answering the questions
1.9
9.4
56.6
22.6
9.4
53
3.28
0.84
The DinoBytes help me to make links between my own background and the class material
5.8
7.7
53.8
23.1
9.6
52
3.23
0.94
Engagement Survey showed that 37% of the students felt that they had been engaged at the highest level in their prior college courses. The mid-term and end-of-semester survey reflected an increase to 55 and 54% at the highest level of engagement, respectively (Table 6). Some of the students made comments on the final survey, stating that it was difficult for them to become more engaged in the course as they were tired due to end of the semester pressures. Caution must be used when examining the data from the survey, as the engagement level may be impacted naturally by the desire to learn about dinosaurs, compared to other science courses non-science majors could take. Students’ perceptions of the DinoByte activities are generally quite positive. As reported above, the majority of the students agreed that the DinoBytes helped them to increase their learning of the material and allowed them to
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reflect on the material more. The benefit of weekly online exercises on student learning is not a new concept. Riffell and Sibley (2003) reported that students perceived the online homework and email contact with the instructor (primarily about online homework problems) to be the most helpful to learning the material. Grove (2002) found that when asked which element of the course was most useful to them, Virtual Voyages were listed by the largest number of students—in fact, some students even stated that they appreciated the weekly online assignments, which forced them to engage with the course material each week, not just prior to exams. This agrees with the DinoByte findings, as over half of the students in the Dinosaur course answered that they would probably not or definitely not read the articles linked online in the course management program or the readings in the
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Table 6 Time-estimate data from Classroom Engagement Survey, Fall 2005 (n = 69) Engagement level
Description
Pre-semestera (%)
Level 1
What I am doing has little or nothing directly to do with the subject matter learning and it is unrelated to the teacher’s lesson
10
4
6
Level 2
What I am doing has little or nothing to do with the subject matter learning but is related to the teacher’s lesson, or is something I need to do for the lesson
13
7
9
Level 3
What I am doing is related to the subject matter and to the specific material for the class, but I am not learning very much from it because the work is too trivial or easy, or else it is too hard
17
15
13
Level 4
What I am doing is in the subject area and it is related to the lesson, and the level of difficulty is just about right for me, but I am really not interested in it and so I am not very engaged in it
20
18
17
Level 5
What I am doing is in the subject matter and it is related to the lesson, and the level of difficulty is just about right for me, and I am working at it and am really engaged in it
37
55
54
3
1
1
Other
Mid-semester (%)
End semester (%)
Survey developed by Hamilton (2005, Unpublished) a
In the pre-semester survey, students are asked to rate their level of engagement in their previous college courses to date. In the mid-semester survey, students are asked to rate the first half of the Dinosaur course. In the end-of-semester survey, students are asked to rate the second half of the Dinosaur course
textbook if they were not part of a weekly assignment. Those students that answered that they would possibly read the article stated they might if the topic was interesting and if they had time. As the Monday and Wednesday class meetings were lecture-based and Friday sessions consisted of discussion and DinoByte follow-up activities, the reported student engagement values can be connected to the JiTT pedagogy. With consistent percentages reported on the mid-semester and end-semester survey, students retained their engagement in the course once they became engaged with the material. This was an important objective of utilizing JiTT with the commuting student population in a general education science course. Although there are strong indications that students are more engaged in a class with JiTT exercises, does increased student engagement reflect or lead to increased learning? A limitation of our study is the lack of a control or comparison group to determine if the observed learning gains on the diagnostic survey could be attributed to the addition of the JiTT exercises. With the commuting student population at Penn State Delaware County, students who arrive late to campus due to transportation issues had the option of sitting in on a section offered later in the day. In a related study, Linneman and Plake (2006) were not able to show JiTT enhances the conceptual learning of students in large-enrollment introductory geology courses. The authors were able to have a comparison group in which traditional
lecture was utilized as an alternative to the JiTT exercises. However, several threats emerged that question including the use of different instructors for the different sections. Thus, this impact of JiTT on student learning still requires some additional research.
Conclusion The JiTT technique can be an effective pedagogical tool in encouraging students to become actively engaged with their learning in introductory-level general education geoscience courses. With students having more and more competing responsibilities and pressures outside the classroom, it is difficult for students to find the time to spend studying material in courses they identify as electives and non-essential to their future careers. The integration of technology and active learning exercises has students self-reporting an increase in learning, construction of new knowledge, and comprehension of course content.
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