Model Course Notes

Notes from Web Conference 3

Agenda:

1. Good problems follow-up
2. Problem authoring discussion
3. NPL
4. Model Courses

Good Problems

• The heuristics that we discussed last time shape fairly easily into a "rubric" that may or may not be useful to think about when writing problems and thinking about what existing problems might have or lack.
  • Learning objective -- could be very simple; it may also be that this should also be available to students
  • "Nice enough" numbers -- distinct values allow tracking of student work
  • Test suite? Can we check for nice numbers? For robustness?
  • Students and nice numbers: is there information about how students react to problems, to figure out what problems are effective and which turn students off?

• Metadata for problems: could be part of a new NPL, and could include
  • Learning objectives (possibly available to students, in some cases this might not be a good thing)
  • Quality measures
  • Information on problems that have substantial added information, hints, or instruction. These might be problems that should be embedded in a set.

Good NPL Problems

• Are solutions good for students? Are there data that substantiate the value of solutions to student learning?
• The solution -> new problem model. This may be very useful in some cases, though not necessarily all.