Full Paper

Robert Loss¹ and Des Thornton²

rlosstrd@cc.curtin.edu.au, ithornto@info.curtin.edu.au

The increase in student numbers, continuing budget reductions and wider range of student backgrounds continue to place much of the Australian university sector under pressure to survive let alone improve the quality of their educational programs. One common mechanism used to improve productivity at the undergraduate level has been to increase student numbers in lecture based courses. In the last few years, increasing student numbers in the traditionally smaller groupings of tutorials and laboratories has also occurred. While increasing class sizes may be successful in reducing unit costs it fails to address a fundamental issue of the passivity of the learning that occurs in most traditional classes. Of the students, who can be bothered to attend classes, fewer still spend their time engaging with the content while the instructors seem to spend all their time "doing". The real challenge facing universities is to design approaches to teaching and learning which reverse these roles. Methods are required which create "active learning environments", maximize student participation, and where the role of the instructor becomes one of facilitator/mentor rather than deliverer, and at the same time, improves educational quality and productivity.

Other issues addressing many other Australian Universities at this time are those associated with the need to rationalize the overall number of subjects and courses across Schools and the need to reduce contact time between staff and students. There is clear evidence of considerable "over-teaching" in many courses and no evidence that this is of long term advantage to graduates. This situation is a clear indication of what has been suspected for some time. If students do not appear to understand the concepts being taught in one hour of conventional contact per week then it is often extended to two hours; and if two hours are insufficient then it is extended to three; etc. This continues until students face high contact hours and they still do not comprehend the concepts. This ever increasing time and resource model might succeed in an environment with unlimited resources, with very small student numbers and where students who can attend for 40 hours per week, but it fails to address the root of the problem, i.e. the way teaching/learning takes place at university. Effective models of teaching and learning which take advantage of advances in science education and information technology to achieve quantum gains in efficiency, and effectiveness need to be developed. The ever increasing numbers of course objectives in most course also need to be addressed by rethinking what is taught so that students are prepared for future employment demands in which communication, information technology literacy, team-work, negotiation skills and problem solving ability will be of equal importance to discipline specific knowledge and understanding (Candy et al. 1994). Courses to cater for "new" emerging student populations with non-conventional backgrounds, needs and aspirations need to be considered i.e. programs which can be made available by non-traditional and more flexible methods.

It was with these and a number of specific local issues in mind that the Department of Applied Physics at Curtin University began to examine alternative teaching and learning methods which resulted in the establishment of Studio pilot project.

The "Studio" learning environment which is being piloted in the Department of Applied Physics at Curtin is essentially that developed by Professor Jack Wilson at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) (DeLoughry, 1995). Rensselaer has received international recognition for its innovative approach to "re-engineering" the way undergraduate science and engineering programs are delivered. In an environment of shrinking financial resources and static student numbers, RPI established a clear agenda for change in 1991. They set as their goals improved educational efficiency, greater student involvement in the learning process, increased emphasis on teamwork with no decrease in educational standards. An extensive evaluation of their model over a three to four year period has shown they have exceeded all of their primary goals (Wilson, 1994).

To achieve this, RPI changed the traditional lecture, tutorial, laboratory approach to teaching undergraduate science into what they term "studios". The "studio" metaphor was selected because it conjures a vision of a creative environment in which students are actively involved with constructing understanding. Greater emphasis is placed on teamwork and problem solving as opposed to passive listening to the delivery of information. Students are required to work in groups and exploit a variety of experimentation facilities to actively build an understanding of the topics at hand. The role of the instructors in the studio differs from that in a lecture in that studio instructors acts as mentors rather than as the main delivery agents. Most class activities are planned around a series of student centered controlled discoveries. While the students are busy, instructors have time to work with individuals on specific problems and expand on questions that rise from the material.

The management of the studio classroom also differs from the traditional lecture/laboratory environment. Typically two instructors, an experienced teacher and a graduate assistant, are present during studio classes. Despite this apparent increase in staffing, students are expected to take considerably more control over their work than in conventional classes. The exact manner in which many of the activities are undertaken is often determined by each student group, allowing for differences in gender, race, culture, learning style, interest and background to be taken into account . Because they have local control of the tools, students may explore opportunities to approach the subject matter from different directions. Students are encouraged to work together to solve problems, or achieve understanding. Rensselaer have found that the Studio builds many of the socialization skills that are necessary to succeed in a team environment, a highly desirable skill that is rarely taught in undergraduate classes .

Strong emphasis is placed in the studio environment on students developing a wide range of information technology (IT) skills similar to those used by practicing scientists. Students use computers, and a range of software tools to collect and analyze data in much the same way as students use equipment and calculators in the traditional laboratory environment. It should be stressed that IT is not the primary focus of the studio although this is what many students initially perceive. The majority of IT based materials used in formal classes are made available to students on-line, students communicate with each other and faculty via email from the very first day of semester and access to the Internet is made freely available.

The physical environment of a studio is also significantly different from a lecture theatre, tutorial room and most laboratories currently found at most Universities. The studio is a single facility which serves all of the student contact hours required. Separate facilities for lectures, tutorials, and laboratory sessions are not required and neither are the elaborate transient setups and down time associated with traditional facilities. The RPI experience has been that studios can be arranged to support an increased flow of students, decreasing the duration of their formal contact time, increasing their informal contact, the quality of their experience, and the efficiency of their time. When the studio is not being used for formal sessions it reverts to conventional computer lab and be made available to students with appropriate security for 24 hours of the day.

Evaluations of the studio model at RPI over the past four years have shown significant results. Student attendance at Physics courses have increased from around 55% for lectures to around 98% for studios. Student feedback on satisfaction with their courses showed a significant improvement, faculty member satisfaction with their teaching showed a significant increase and student learning outcomes were comparable if not improved over the traditional approach. These findings are significant given that there was a reduction in student contact hours of ~30%. There is some suggestion that learning outcomes have been significantly improved however, it is clearly very difficult to provide reliable statistics in this area.

Details of the Curtin Physics Studio courses are available in Loss and Thornton, (1997) and the Physics Studio Website (Loss, 1997). The operation, management and physical nature of the Curtin Physics Studio essentially follows that developed at RPI which is described above. In first semester 1997, 4 first year physics units (6 classes, ~120 students) were run in studio format while in second semester this was expanded to 8 classes with similar number of classes planned for 1998.

The specific objectives of the Curtin Physics Studio project are to :

• improve student attendance,
• reduce student contact hours,
• improve/maintain existing learning outcomes,
• increase instructor satisfaction and
• to develop a model which might be scaled up to reduce overall cost of tuition.

The "Studio" pilot is also being used to evaluate a number of other factors. Of prime importance is evaluating the studio model in terms of educational effectiveness, student and staff appeal, and cost effectiveness. At the same time the studio is considered as a catalyst to encourage other Schools and Departments to review their current approach to teaching undergraduate programs. The studio is providing valuable information for planning staff development programs for innovative teaching, the redesign of existing courses and teaching facilities.

In line with these objectives the following evaluation program have or are currently being undertaken;

• Student survey of course expectations before and following course completion.
• Selected student and staff interviews of "course experience".
• Standard "Physics Misconception" test on a before, after and subsequent years basis.
• Comparison of student performance with other groups/years.
• Recording of attendance, cost, development time, equipment usage, etc.
• In depth analysis of the cost-benefit factors.

In order to provide information about the long term effectiveness of the model, student feedback is also being sought in second and third years and beyond this into the workplace.

To minimize the impact of long surveys on students and staff a simple short survey form was developed and has been administered three times during the year. Feedback from the first two surveys are currently available on the following questions which the students were asked to respond to on a 6 point scale (Zero=Disagree to 5=Agree)

Figure 1 shows an average of the students responses collected firstly four weeks after the start of semester 1, and then again in the final week of semester 1. An increase in the positiveness of the response from the beginning to the end of semester was obtained for eight of the 12 questions (Q1 - 5, 9 - 11). Of the four questions with negative response over the semester, three are understandable (Q6 - 8) and one responses is what could be termed intriguing (Q12). The general trend is for an improvement about student feelings towards working in the studio environment, about working in groups and coping with the level of IT.

Question six is almost certainly the result of network problems and overcrowding in the studio as more and more students (not all of which were involved with the formal studio classes) sought out and were given access to the studio facilities. The small decrease in student ability to "cope with the physics" (Q7) and to "do the problems and exercises" (Q8) would be expected over this period as the first four weeks of semester 1 involves revision of secondary school concepts whereas later in the semester, many new physics concepts are encountered. The real question which we cannot answer is how much less these students would have been coping with their physics etc. if they were not in the studio environment.

The responses to question 12, (I would prefer notes/overheads to be handed out on paper) is intriguing since we might expect students to become more comfortable with working with IT over the semester and become more at ease about working with a minimum of paper. It appears that old habits die hard.

Finally one should say something regarding the academic performance of these students. There is no evidence to suggest that the academic performance of the students undertaking physics units in the studio program either increased or decreased. There was certainly a substantial increase in attendance with general attendance rates being >80% as compared to conventional lecture classes of around 50% in previous years.

A survey of the instructors involved in the studio program has shown mixed responses about the studio project. Instructors still feel under substantial pressure to "get through the content". In a related matter, planning interactive activities that enable the students to make real progress within the 2 hours allocated to each class takes time and imagination resulting in a tendency to "chalk and talk" when time is tight. To some degree this appears to be due to the lack of time most instructors have to familiarize themselves with the IT tools available in the studio. This clearly highlights the need for extensive staff development in this area.

A preliminary evaluation of the cost effectiveness of the studio approach at the Department of Applied Physics at Curtin has demonstrated that the economic break even point appears to occurs somewhere around classes of 35 students, depending on how existing teaching programs are structured, staffed and funded. A critical factor to consider before deciding whether to convert a subject to Studio mode is the extent to which it involves laboratory or tutorial components. Studio based units simply cannot compete economically with 'lecture only' based units except where classes of <30 are involved and where the one instructor can operate the entire unit within a single time slot. This model ideally suits many senior classes. For units with large number of students and based on tutorials and lectures, groupings of around 40-45 students are required to compete on a purely economic basis with traditional teaching methods. For units involving tutorials, lectures and laboratories groupings of around 30-35 students are satisfactory.

At Curtin, the Studio pilot is currently being operated with classes of 24 students (each with an instructor and a graduate student teaching assistant) which suits the existing student numbers but is slightly above the staffing cost required to operate the conventional lecture/laboratory program. However, the aim of the pilot is to examine the effectiveness of the model from an educational standpoint so that if appropriate it can be scaled up to cover larger courses at Curtin. In the future we anticipate being able to integrate a number of similar first year physics units and to operate the studio economically with groups of around 35 students.

Establishing studio class sizes solely to compete on a purely economically basis with conventional instruction is only one half of the picture. Studio instruction has the potential to substantially reduce building infrastructure costs for Universities due to the reduced need for costly large lecture halls and numerous small tutorial rooms. Unfortunately this cost saving is unlikely to be seen by Departments but may induce University administrations to support these types of innovative teaching developments.

In terms of what works and what doesn't in our current context, the jury is still out on the studio system. Early indications show real gains in class attendance, increasing opportunities for real life skills development and cooperative learning opportunities. Difficulties arising from differences in student IT backgrounds, hardware-software integration and networking problems are some of the easier problems that should be overcome in with experience. The issue of staff development is perhaps the most difficult as this can really only be overcome with time and appropriate levels of funding.

Whatever the final outcome, the studio system does attempt to tackle many of the issues which are confronting all Australian Universities. The challenge is to teach smarter and more effectively without compromising educational quality. At this point in time Australia is ahead of many other countries in its realization of the need to restructure, but well behind a number of other overseas institutions. It is from this perspective that the Curtin Physics Studio should also serve as valuable pilot for the Australian and worldwide university sector.

Funding and support for this project has been obtained from the Federal Government (CAUT), the Curtin Computing Centre, Curtin University Division of Engineering and Science, Curtin University Administration's Open and Flexible Learning Program, and Macsyma Software .

(c) Robert Loss and Des Thornton

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