Changing the Paradigm? Adaptive Learning in Political Science Classes

• In Event: Assessing Innovative Pedagogies for Diverse Learners

Abstract

Adaptive learning (AL) courseware holds promise for helping break down the barriers students face as they navigate through college. It is broadly meant to adjust to students’ abilities; offer personalized feedback; allow students to self-pace through course modules, build competency, and seek mastery; give students agency over their own grade; and prepare students for face-to-face class time and higher level learning strategies. We have long worked to address the challenges of a high-volume introductory class, Global Issues (GI), and viewed AL courseware as another possible arrow in the quiver. GSU’s GI course has many large, 120-student sections, over 2,700 students annually, and 10-14 rotating instructors per semester (including many GTAs). We have repeatedly found that while many of these students perform well, others do not complete class reading even if quizzed on it, and sometimes they do not even purchase the book. A handful of students rarely if ever comes to class. Students taking GI classes generally have significantly divergent levels of prior knowledge and overall preparedness for college. The result of such challenges has been that a persistent proportion of students come poorly prepared for class, classes have lower-than-desired student performance, satisfaction, and engagement, students don’t have enough agency over their own time and grades, and professors are less able to use higher level learning activities.

In 2016, GSU received a $515,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to assess AL in large, introductory classes. Given the promise of AL and the challenges of GI classes, in 2016-2017 we developed an AL GI course, and then implemented it across 51 classes and more than 5,200 students during the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years. In spring 2018, we initiated a four-treatment study (adaptive versus non-adaptive, face-to-face and online). Our study also included four controls (Pell Grant eligibility, student high school performance, first generation students, and first-year students).

In each semester during the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years, except spring 2018 when half the sections used non-AL courseware, all sections of the course were taught using the AL courseware. Across these AL sections and on every question in an extensive perceptive survey, students gave highly positive perceptive ratings of the courseware. On the broadest question, rating the “overall quality” of the AL courseware, 81% rated the it positively, while only 5% rated it negatively. When asked whether taking a course with the AL courseware had “influenced how they will study for future classes,” 69% of students answered positively, while only 5% answered negatively. Seventy-eight percent of students positively responded that the AL courseware “helped them learn the material,” while only 6% answered negatively.

In the spring 2018 assessment of the AL courseware as compared to a traditional non-AL course, the perceptive differences between the adaptive and non-adaptive sections were strongly statistically significant, on every question. However, our hypothesis that students would have similar significant positive perceptive results in both face-to-face and online classes was not supported. While both cohorts had positive perceptions of the courseware, only the face-to-face students’ perceptions were statistically significant. This finding goes against the research findings of others (Yarnell, et. al., 2016) and provides impetus for future investigation.

We also sought to look at the performance differences between adaptive and non-adaptive cohorts using common test questions administered throughout the spring 2018 semester. For face-to-face students, the performance difference between AL and non-AL classes was strongly significant and translated to students in AL sections scoring roughly four points higher across these questions. In online sections, the students in the AL section scored only .73 points higher (not statistically significant). Across all sections, the performance difference between AL and non-AL classes was statistically significant and translated to students in AL sections scoring 1.88 points higher. We found no evidence to support that any of our control groups saw stronger perceptive or performance improvements when using the AL courseware (the null hypotheses were supported), except one. While first-year students’ perception of the courseware did not add significantly to student positive perceptions, the positive impact of the AL courseware on performance was stronger for first-year students. It is also important to note that average DFW rates for GI classes fell roughly 15% from historical levels after the introduction of the AL-courseware. These promising findings support the case that the AL courseware can provide a useful foundation for student progression, success, satisfaction, academic confidence, and performance.

Authors

• Christopher Logan Brown, Georgia State University

• Jeannie Grussendorf, Georgia State University

• Michael David Shea

• Clark Demas