Development, Implementation, Refining and Revising of Adaptive Platform Lessons for an Engineering Course

One way to provide active learning is through the flipped classroom. However, finding suitable pre-class learning activities to improve student preparation and the subsequent classroom environment, including student engagement, can challenge the flipped modality. To address this challenge, adaptive learning lessons were developed for pre-class learning for a course in Numerical Methods. The lessons were then used as part of a research study to determine their cognitive and affective impacts. Thoughtful design and implementation of the adaptive lessons were completed prior to beginning the study. This paper discusses the development, implementation, refining, and revising of the adaptive learning platform (ALP) lessons for pre-class learning in a Numerical Methods flipped course. The paper also walks through the content of a typical lesson and shows the type of behavioral data collected by the adaptive learning platform by illustrating the interactions of three students of differing performance levels with a single lesson. In conjunction with the student's course grade, these interactions will be used in Fall 2022 to provide advice to struggling students about effective behaviors. The first author and two other instructors who teach Numerical Methods collaborated on developing the adaptive lessons for the whole course. The work began in Fall 2020 by enumerating the various chapters and breaking each one into 30 individual objectives (assignments), which were then divided into individual nodes (lessons). Each lesson includes five sections (introduction, learning objectives, video lectures, textbook content, assessment). The three instructors met twice a month to discuss the content that provides the basis for each of the lessons. The main discussion of the meetings centered on what a student would be expected to learn before coming to class, choosing appropriate content, agreeing on prerequisites, and choosing and making new assessment questions. Lessons were then created using a commercially available platform called RealizeIT. The content was tested by learning assistants and instructors. The adaptive lessons were completed in December 2020. The adaptive lessons were tested for implementation in Spring 2021 at the first author's university. Questions asked by students during office hours, on the LMS discussion board, and via emails while doing the lessons were used to update ALP content, clarify questions, and revise hints offered by the platform. The paper discusses the process of development, implementation, revision, and refinement of adaptive learning platform lessons for pre-class learning for a numerical methods course that is taught in the flipped modality. Three test cases are discussed to show how students interact with a typical ALP lesson.