An Online Booking System Encourages Self-Directed Learning and

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An Online Booking System Encourages Self-Directed Learning and Personalization of Study James W. Gaynor*,† and Duncan Brown‡ †

Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool, Crown Street, Liverpool, United Kingdom, L69 7ZD Computing Services Department, University of Liverpool, Foundation Building, Liverpool, United Kingdom, L69 7ZX

‡

S Supporting Information *

ABSTRACT: Collaboration between the chemistry and computing services departments was undertaken to create an online booking system to be used as a learning and teaching aid in an undergraduate chemistry lab course. The system helped promote personalization of study and could be easily adapted to any department within the university. The system was implemented in a number of educational contexts, which are discussed, along with an evaluation of the system. Students easily adapted to the new process with a high percentage appreciating the freedom it offered. We hope that other universities will consider similar collaborations within their own institutions as pedagogical research strongly suggests that introducing certain levels of flexibility into courses encourages active learning and enhances student engagement.

KEYWORDS: First-Year Undergraduate/General, Second-Year Undergraduate, Upper-Division Undergraduate, Curriculum, Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary, Laboratory Instruction, Internet/Web-Based Learning, Laboratory Management, Student-Centered Learning

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enrollment into consideration, a system was developed that primarily benefitted student learning while improving the efficiency of a number of the lab courses. An e-learning and technology organization system was created that puts the onus of when to learn onto the students, offering them flexibility as well as the chance to enhance their professional development. An online booking system was introduced onto the second-year synthetic lab course. The idea of an online booking system is not novel with online sources, such as Moodle, having features that allow this.20,21 Booking systems are rife in the private sector22−24 and undoubtedly in use in universities all over the world, but there is limited literature about creating such a system with the primary idea of aiding student learning.25 It was hoped that students would become more engaged with the lab course by taking ownership of their learning. Herein, we describe a collaborative effort between the chemistry and computing services departments to create a chemistry online booking system (CHOBS). The system was designed so it could be

t is acknowledged that a deep learning approach promotes student engagement with lifelong learning.1,2 This was further validated in a recent study where a quantitative scale was used to measure students’ potential as lifelong learners and a positive correlation with a deep learning approach observed.3 Critical thinking and the ability to access higher levels of understanding4−6 is strongly assisted by learning in this manner and can be encouraged using many pedagogical methods.7−10 One way is by increasing flexibility in a learning environment so a learner can adapt to numerous learning styles, which will allow assimilation of information when delivered in complex and less-structured learning settings.11 It has also been suggested that empowering students with choice and flexibility, in general, enhances their university experience by encouraging active learning and development of softer skills,1,12 which has proven to be beneficial for chemistry graduates.13 E-learning initiatives are widespread, not only within chemistry departments,14−16 but as part of university teaching in general,17,18 with a key U.K. government objective since 2005 being the incorporation of e-learning and technology into U.K. universities.19 Taking this and our increasing student © 2012 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

Published: May 31, 2012 1019

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autoupdates and displays all of the relevant items that are available to be booked, together with a current count of spaces available for each booking option (Figure 1). Once options are

easily used in various educational contexts where student choice is possible. CHOBS is linked with the student database and could be converted for use by any department across the university. We hope this study will encourage other institutions to follow a similar pattern.

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CHOBS OVERVIEW There is an existing booking system contained within the university’s virtual learning environment (VLE); however, there was a need to create a more advanced system with a greater flexibility within its functionality. CHOBS works as a series of Web pages controlled by a custom database, with its appearance fitting with current university styles and the login page containing the usual chemistry department menus (more technical information is available in the Supporting Information). Only members of the university can access CHOBS, with students only being able to access booking information for courses in which they are enrolled. A key functionality is related to the number of choices a student can make. If there are N booking options, the administrator can allow a student to choose anywhere between 0 and N choices. This may appear trivial, but is something not available with the university’s VLE and is a key aspect of CHOBS, which could allow the system to be used across a wide variety of chemistry courses or even other degree courses (this is controlled by the administrators, who have access to three admin pages detailed in Table 1). Once the students have successfully logged into the system, the welcome page allows the students to choose whichever of their courses that use CHOBS via a dropdown list. After selection, the page Table 1. The Editable Sections and Various Functions of the Three Administration Pages

Figure 1. Screenshot of CHOBS from the student interface. Above the image shown would be some introductory text and a save button toward the bottom.

selected by the students, the page can be submitted. If the choices are valid, the student is directed to a simple confirmation Web page. At the same time, an e-mail is sent to the student detailing the choices that have been made. If the choices are not valid, the student remains on the same booking page and a warning message is displayed detailing the problems with the selection.

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DISCUSSION The online booking system was used with a second-year synthetic chemistry lab course, which had 95 students complete the course. The course ran for 12 weeks with five, 3-h sessions a week; four sessions were in the laboratory and one session was a workshop. The first 6 weeks of the lab course were focused on synthetic organic chemistry utilizing techniques such as column chromatography and vacuum distillation and the last 6 weeks were focused on inorganic chemistry with the formation and analysis of an array of transition-metal complexes (iron, vanadium, chromium, cobalt, and nickel). Students were expected to complete 3 organic and 3 inorganic reactions during the course, with deadlines at roughly 2-week intervals (missing the deadline resulted in late penalties). The 1020

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expectation was that students would take between 4 and 6 lab sessions per experiment (2−3 per week), although the better students could finish some experiments within three sessions if all went well. At the changeover period between the organic and inorganic lab segments, most staff and teaching assistants (TAs) changed, which felt a little disjointed. The initial aim was to introduce CHOBS into the organic portion of the course, but it proved such a success that it was brought in completely for the whole course, which gave the course a feel of unity. CHOBS was used in 3 ways in the course: booking into a lab session, booking into a time slot to have lab experiments graded, and booking into optional workshop sessions. Students were told that CHOBS was used to monitor attendance. Students’ attitude might have been different had penalty or bonus points been enforced for the correct use of CHOBS. We wanted to assess how students used the system with no pressure. They just assumed it was part of the course and adjusted to it as such. Booking into Lab Sessions

In previous years, students could attend the synthetic lab whenever they wished without offering any prior warning to which days they wished to attend. Students simply turned up, which is in stark contrast to the first-year course that is quite regimented. This lack of structure was problematic from the lab management perspective because some days there would be 20 students in the lab and other days there would be 80−85 students. CHOBS was developed to offer some structure to the lab course, while allowing students flexibility in their learning. The maximum number of students allowed in the lab was capped at 65−80, depending on the day. The deadline for booking into a lab session was 30 min before the start of the session with a TA printing a list from CHOBS indicating which students would be attending. Students were then reminded to sign the list. The booking slots for weeks 1−6 were made available to students before the start of week 1, with the booking slots for weeks 7−12 becoming available during week 6. An observation made by staff was that students were booking and turning up. In previous years, the lab became increasingly busy in the weeks when deadlines loomed, but it was evident that students were turning up from the start of the course. Students registered onto CHOBS a total of 2525 times (approximately 27 sessions per students) with over 70% successfully signing the list (Figure 2A). This is a minimum value as staff were aware of many students forgetting to sign list. Some students would arrive to lab without booking on CHOBS but were not turned away (it rarely happened on days when the lab was full). These students were told to sign the bottom of the list and carry on with lab work. Apart from a couple of repeat offenders, this rarely happened and over 95% of the students in the lab booked in via CHOBS (Figure 2B). The percentages are derived from information gathered by the students who signed the list, but every student booked in via CHOBS a minimum of 15 times (one student only signed in 5 times, but this student had extenuating circumstances and issues accessing the Internet). As would be expected, students’ correct use of CHOBS dipped a little toward week 6 where the lab changed over to the inorganic experiments (Figure 2C). Looking closely at the information, this is partly attributed to some students finishing their experiments early and not attending laboratories in weeks 5 and 6, but forgetting to unbook from the system. Because the booking slots for weeks

Figure 2. Bookings made through CHOBS: (A) percent of bookings made via CHOBS that resulted in attendance, judged by signing a list; (B) percent of all confirmed attendees who booked in via CHOBS, judged by names entered on the list and names handwritten onto list; and (C) percent of bookings made via CHOBS that resulted in attendance, judged by signing a list by week over the 12 week semester.

7−12 were made available in week 6, it is not surprising that the correct use of CHOBS picks up again in weeks 6−8, with the inevitable tail off as the holidays approached. Booking into Grading Slots

The initial plan was to just use CHOBS for booking into lab sessions. After the first grading session in week 2, where the queue was 50 students deep, this system was changed. A booking system involving CHOBS for grading was designed as follows: by the grading deadline, students had to have their experiment written up and verified by the TAs, who would make a note in the lab book that it was completed in time. The students could carry on in the lab while waiting for the previous experiment to be graded. After the deadline, students could use CHOBS to book a 15-min slot over a 4-day period. A grading list was printed from CHOBS on each of those 4 days, and the student was called from the lab at the appropriate time. If there was a slot still available, students were allowed to handwrite their names into the slot. If a student did not turn up to their grading slot, they were removed from the list and then had to wait until a TA was available. Although the success rate of this system was not followed, students tended to turn up as the alternative was a simple queuing system that was undesirable. 1021

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grade. This said, the top end of the class who scored >80% for the course did use CHOBS more successfully than the average, with the top end average being 83% of the time (17 students: successful CHOBS use ranging from 52−97%). This is encouraging as it shows the system is accessible to all students. An unexpected observation was a significant rise in the average course grade by over 10%. In addition to CHOBS, other systems to enhance student engagement were introduced to this course, including a new system of implementing safety assessments, for example. However, it should be noted that the content and assessment procedures remained constant. This cohort of students were identified at the end of their first year of study (so before undertaking this course) as being above average, which goes part way to explain the rise in grades. It would be careless to suggest that the use of CHOBS solely contributed to this as there were numerous factors involved, but a general increase in student engagement would hopefully have been a benefit. Students seemed to like the CHOBS system, which is discussed below.

Using this system requires a certain level of organization from the staff and TAs. If six TAs were due to be in the lab, four could be assigned to grading (thus 4 × 9 slots a lab session). If a TA called in sick or had to leave early, it would cause problems as 9 students cold not attend their grading session. Another issue occurred with TAs taking too long to grade. In either case, one of the two remaining TAs would have to grade as backup. Booking into Workshop Sessions

Attendance at three of the six organic workshops was optional as the content of the organic workshops were nonassessed, formative, worked examples; however, attendance at the inorganic workshops was mandatory. Students were asked to register via CHOBS if they planned to attend an optional workshop so the number of TAs could be adjusted. Sixty percent of the class indicated in advance that they would attend the three optional workhops. During the workshops, students signed the list generated from CHOBS. Of those who had indicated they were going to attend, only 68% actually did (which equates to about 40% of the whole class). Similar to the lab sessions, some students turned up without using CHOBS, but this occurred infrequently, only ∼10%. The aim of having a few optional workshops was to give students the flexibility to learn and understand the material at their own pace and in their preferred way. The workshops were not assessed, but were formative in preparation for a summative class test; the students would find the test particularly difficult if they did not complete the workshop material. Considering the average grade for the class test was concordant with previous years, introducing this mode of teaching has not had any detrimental effects but has the additional benefit of allowing students flexibility. Some students liked the structured environment of a workshop whereas others preferred working at home, so this system could please both sets of students.

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Student Feedback

Two surveys were posted on our VLE soon after the end of the course, one for laboratories and one for workshops. Of the 95 students completing the course, 25 students left feedback on both (some rather detailed). Some of the questions were general, whereas others were specific to the organic and inorganic portions of the course. Examples of questions were “How did you rate the enjoyment of the lab course?”, “How did you rate the lab manual?” to “How did you rate the communication of organic staff with you via e-mails/VLE?”. The questions that related specifically to CHOBS were • The online booking system was used for booking into lab sessions. How did you find this? (five multiple-choice options) • The online booking system was also used for booking into time slots to get experiments graded. How did you find this system? (five multiple-choice options) • If you have any specific thoughts regarding the online booking system, please write them here (short answer option). The multiple-choice questions indicated that the students liked CHOBS (Figure 4). All but two students liked the use for grading. The most encouraging result was how the students

EVALUATION OF CHOBS

Grades

Perhaps surprisingly, there was only a slight correlation between a student’s course grade and how well the student used CHOBS when booking into the lab (Figure 3). The student obtaining the lowest grade of 35% actually successfully used CHOBS on 13/15 occasions, whereas the person who used CHOBS the best (28/28) obtained a borderline first-class

Figure 4. Feedback obtained from students, who were asked two multiple-choice questions; “The online bookings was used for booking into lab sessions. How did you find this?” and “The online booking system was also used for booking into time slots to get books graded. How did you find this system?”.

Figure 3. Distribution of course grades versus successful CHOBS use when booking into the lab. The line shown is the best fit. 1022

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of which experiments to undertake. A booking system similar to this would help while maintaining a certain level of flexibility. The system was prepared in such a way that only minor alterations are needed for this booking system to be distributed across campus, which is something we are actively encouraging. Of course, additional features can always be incorporated. Currently, our system only allows students to book onto a category or item from one particular course. There are instances when 3 or 4 courses might be essentially doing the same thing, so having multiple courses accessing the same booking information might be advantageous. Also allowing administrators to add students to an item from the back-end of the database would be beneficial.

responded to CHOBS when used to book into lab sessions. The majority thought highly of the system resulting in various interesting comments obtained from the short-answer question ranging from “Online Booking System = The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread” to “Chaos”; presumably the latter comment was from an unlucky student who happened to have numerous bad experiences. Apart from that exception, comments were genuinely positive with the more negative comments seeming to notice the benefits but saying “Needs refinement although better than previous system” and “If TAs kept to the times booked, it would be perfect”. Grading of the inorganic experiments took longer than organic write-ups due to having more calculations and so forth, which resulted in 15 min not necessarily being long enough. This issue was detected before this evaluation was completed and as a result the slots were increased to 20 min for the last round of grading, which seemed to help. Additional questions asked in the feedback questionnaire included students discussing three things they did and did not enjoy about the lab course as a whole. Among the responses, the terms freedom, flexibility, independence, and choice were recurrent themes. Using CHOBS in this manner requires delicate planning of the necessary timings. The staff and TAs, on the whole, seem to like the system but also commented on the grading slots being a little short in some instances. Some of these TAs took this lab and commented that CHOBS “...is a lot more efficient than when I was an undergraduate”.

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ASSOCIATED CONTENT

S Supporting Information *

Technical details for the construction of the online booking. This material is available via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.

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AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Author

*E-mail: [email protected]. Notes

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank members of the chemistry department and computing services for support of this project. Particular acknowledgement must be paid to Christine Stalker for help preparing class lists for every lab session.

CONCLUSIONS We found computing services exceptionally keen to bring in new technologies to our university. This has resulted in a fantastic internal collaboration resulting in an online booking system applicable to various educational scenarios. Although a booking system is not necessarily novel, there has been limited evidence of using a system with the focus on aiding student learning.25 The booking system was used in three scenarios: to book into lab, workshop sessions, and grading slots to have an experiment assessed. Although the latter still needs refinement, the use of an online booking system is convenient for the students,26 allows personalization of learning, and encourages students to become actively engaged with their course. The overall result has been positive not only to the student experience, but also to management of the teaching sessions. Attendance was high and more evenly distributed, with students completing their work more efficiently, which then has an additional benefit of reducing hazards and increasing safety. Positive feedback was obtained from both undergraduate students and TAs, with the former liking the flexibility it offers them. The few cases of negative feedback alluded to the grading system needing refinement, with measures to rectify this already in place for future years. The booking system was not forced onto students but the success rate of its use was over 70%. Detailed database designs have been included in the Supporting Information. Our hope is that other institutions will use this information and set up similar systems that could enhance not only the chemistry education sector, but also university teaching in general. More widely, it is appreciated that university systems might not allow the flexibility suggested here, but a system such as this could be easily used to allow flexibility in other ways. For example, if an array of experiments is available within the lab, students could be allowed the choice

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