Supporting students in their
first year at university: the
role of online learning

Associate Professor Mary Peat
and Dr Sue Franklin,
Faculty of Science

Although we continue to develop additional resources to be added to the VLE, in recent years we have been investigating how students use these materials and how they perceive the materials support their learning. Several projects have now been completed on the use and usefulness of online materials, including some longitudinal studies on online learning. A recent study has indicated that 15-20% of our first year biology students are choosing not to use online resources. Some of our unpublished data suggest that if students are not using the materials, they may be at risk of performing badly.

One of our more recent projects was to look at students’ use of assessment resources (formative and summative; online and offline), and students’ perceptions of the usefulness of these resources to their learning. The research plan enabled us to investigate correlations between use or non-use of the assessment resources and final performance in the unit of study. The assessment activities available are shown in Table 1.

Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to determine whether students had used the summative and formative assessment materials and how useful they had found them in supporting their learning. Participation rates in all compulsory assessment tasks were high (97-99%), however participation in the formative assessment opportunities was much lower, with 20-30% of students not using them. Generally speaking, most of the students who had attempted or completed the various assessment resources found them to be at least useful, if not extremely useful. However, students responded less positively to the summative resources (weekly quiz, report and poster presentation) than to the formative resources (mid-course exam, self-assessment modules and weekly self-test quiz).

Open-ended questions investigated students’ perceptions on how the formative assessment resources helped them in their learning. Students reported that the self-assessment modules and the self-test quizzes were most useful for revision and consolidating knowledge/enhancing understanding, as well as highlighting an awareness of their understanding/lack of understanding of the course content. Students who did not use a particular formative assessment resource were asked to explain their reasons for non-usage. Time, motivation or lack of awareness of the resources was the primary reason for non-use, however, some indicated that they would use them later for revision.

The relationship between final grade and use or non-use of formative assessment resources was analysed. Student performance was clustered into three categories – students with a credit or above for the final mark (65% and over, i.e. excelling students), students with a pass (50-64%) and failing students (less than 50%). Interestingly a greater proportion of the students who failed the course had taken more advantage of the formative assessment resources than the students who passed! Within each student performance category the use and non-use of formative assessment resources was compared with the mean mark for each category of students. The data showed that there is no apparent difference in any of the student categories for final performance outcome for students who did or did not use the various formative assessment resources. Thus it would appear that using the formative assessment resources and finding them useful is not a predictor of learning outcomes for any of the three student performance categories. This project has been accepted for the ASCILITE 2002 Conference: later this year.

As we are currently providing a variety of assessment resources with what we believe to be relevant feedback we are concerned that these resources are not having the desired impact on student learning. Thus the worrying aspect of our results is that, although the poorer students are trying very hard and more of them (compared with the more suc
cessful students) are using the formative assessment resources provided, these resources do not appear to be helping them. This is in contrast to some of the current literature in which the use of formative tests before summative examinations has been shown to increase the final grade of students. We, as teachers, need to demonstrate to our students how to use our resources to their advantage. Perhaps to do this we may need to review our feedback and ask ourselves is it good enough?

Associate Professor Mary Peat is an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Science with special responsibilities for teaching and learning. Dr Sue Franklin is the Director of First Year Biology Mary and Sue jointly research student use, and perceptions of usefulness, of online and offline resources that have been developed to support student learning in large first year classes. (The current first year enrolment is 1300). They have each received two awards for Excellence in Teaching from The University of Sydney. Their recent publications can be found on http://fybio.bio.usyd.edu.au/fyb/ribet/publications/publicat.htm

Copyright ©2002 Institute for Teaching and Learning