The Wiley Network

Teaching Multi-Section Courses: Advice and Perspectives

teaching-multi-section-courses-advice-and-perspective

Christopher Ruel, Senior Marketing Manager, Wiley

May 21, 2019

Whitney Zimmerman is an assistant teaching professor at Penn State University and the course coordinator for elementary statistics. In addition to acting as course coordinator, Zimmerman teaches a large, online section of the course. I recently spoke with the professor about the challenges of teaching online, coordinating multi-section courses, and her advice to educators who have similar responsibilities within their departments.

Q. You currently teach elementary statistics online. Do you have students from many disciplines taking the course?

A. Yes, they’re primarily from business, the social sciences, information science, and technology.

Q. Does that present particular challenges?

A. I used to teach statistics to education majors in the College of Education here at Penn State. The thing that is more challenging when teaching to a broader variety of students is that I need to be careful with the examples I use. I have to keep it simple so that nothing within the content of the example impacts their ability to understand the example. 

Q. How many sections do you teach?

A. I personally teach two sections a semester. However, I coordinate all sections, and this past summer we had 24 sections. There are 30 to 40 students per section, equaling about 500 students in total. Last summer, it was almost 800 students; the summer courses have grown like crazy since I’ve been here.

Q. What was your process for designing a multi-section course?

A. When I started here three-and-a-half years ago, someone else had already designed a course that was using a different textbook and homework system. Last year, we rewrote almost 80 percent of the class when we moved to a simulation-based inference curriculum. I rewrote nearly all of the online notes. It took about a year to make the whole move.

Q. If I’m an instructor or coordinator, and I hear it took a year to move everybody over, that sounds like a pretty significant barrier. What advice would you give to someone who says: “That’s too much.”

A: It was a big move for us because it wasn’t just switching homework systems. We were changing curriculums, moving from a traditional to a simulation-based inference curriculum. So, yes, that’s going to be a two- or three-semester switch. Changing textbooks and homework systems would be much quicker.

Q. For those who may not know, how much do intro stats curriculums differ?

A. A traditional curriculum uses a lot of formulas. Students compute Z-tests, d statistics, and t statistics; in other words, they do a lot of math. With a simulation-based inference curriculum, there’s a totally different approach to introducing confidence intervals and hypothesis testing. Those two concepts are the most important things for students to learn in an intro course. 

Q. In addition to WileyPLUS, what other online platforms are used for instruction?

A. Penn State uses Canvas. We also have open access, online course notes that I write, and these are managed in Drupal 8. The online notes and the textbook work together. Each week, the students are assigned readings in the online notes and in the textbook. We have found that the students are not always ready to jump directly into the textbook. If students don’t want to read the online notes, we have lecture videos, and most of those are open access on YouTube. 

After completing the readings, the students complete WileyPLUS assignments. The assignments are followed by a weekly quiz within Canvas. Weekly lab work is also required.

Q. How does the lab component work?

A. Students do the lab all by themselves. The textbook is software agnostic, so the software-specific examples are in the online notes or in the videos. Students watch the videos and then use Minitab Express. From there, they copy and paste the output and submit for grading.

Q. With so many sections and students, how is grading tackled?

A. The WileyPLUS assignments are numeric entry, fill-in-the-blank, or multiple-choice questions that are automatically graded. Weekly quizzes consist of 15 questions equaling 15 points. There’s usually one open-ended question, and the other 12 or 13 are automatically graded. So as an instructor, I hand grade one question per student each week. Grading lab assignments takes the most amount of work. Instructors who have smaller sections grade the labs themselves, and that requires a few hours per week. Instructors who teach larger sections, like me, get undergraduate teaching assistant support for grading labs. Without a TA, I’d probably be looking at eight to ten hours grading lab assignments.

Q. Let’s talk about how you communicate with your students. What methods or applications do you use?

A. Almost all of my communication with students is asynchronous using Canvas Announcements and Canvas Inbox messages. In the past, I’ve used Zoom for office hours, but the number of students who would show up was so small that this semester I’m not doing live office hours; I do those upon request only. We also have undergraduate peer tutors, and they use Zoom to run live Q&A hours every week. The format works really well because the peer tutors are willing to stay up till midnight or later to talk to students. 

Q. Do you believe students are more comfortable with asynchronous office hours?

A. When I was a TA, my office hours would be packed. I’ve found that our students prefer and are more comfortable talking to the undergraduate peer tutors than to me. My discussion boards, though, are filled and quite busy. So, in that respect, they seem comfortable asking me questions on the discussion board. Out of 80 students, I’m getting anywhere from five to fifteen students using the discussion boards each week.

Q. What advice would you give colleagues who are teaching multiple online sections of any course? 

A. I think it’s worth investing the time upfront to write good notes and create quality videos that can be reused. Yes, it’s an investment, but some of my videos have 3000 views on YouTube; they’re getting used! In the end, the prep saves me time and makes for less work once I have the course up and running.

Q: Throughout your career so far—from teaching assistant to course coordinator of multiple and online sections—what are some of the big takeaways you can share?

A. I think when I first started out teaching statistics I was really focused on the content and the cognitive aspects of the science. Since I’ve been teaching online and working with adult learners, I’m finding that student issues are often not related to course content. When I have students that are struggling, it usually has to do with life/school balance. Students may have issues due to jobs, childcare, or family responsibilities. Unfortunately, I can’t really help them in these areas with the exception of helping them prioritize their work.

Typically, when they come to me, they’ve missed a few lessons. I let them know what I would do if I were in their situation: I would go back and complete the WileyPLUS questions. They’ll receive half credit for everything—that’s my late policy. After that, they should begin the current lesson. The content builds each class session; a student can’t skip two lessons and then try to jump in later in the class.

I try to use WileyPLUS to get them caught up as quickly as possible. We also direct them to their academic advisers who know everything about when courses can be dropped and how such a move can impact financial aid. There are times when the best thing to do is drop the course.

Q. One final question: When teaching intro to statistics, what is it that you feel is the most important thing students should take away from the course?

A. I don't want them to accept everything with a graph or stats as valid. Instead, I want students to understand what they're looking at and see the things that might be misleading so that they are not easily fooled.