To address the challenges of enhancing student engagement and increasing learning effectiveness, Stevens Institute of Technology launched a “boosted learning” initiative. This involved sending students a series of email quizzes in the weeks and months following their courses. Answers were electronically recorded to help analyze engagement and retention of knowledge.
In order to address the dual challenges of enhancing student engagement and increasing learning effectiveness, Stevens Institute of Technology launched a “boosted learning” initiative. This involved sending students a series of emails in the weeks and months following their courses. Each email contained a single question addressing a core concept of the class. Answers were electronically recorded to help analyze student engagement and retention of knowledge. This was a voluntary activity, with students being given the option to opt out of the project at any time during the trials.
Background
Numerous studies have noted how online learners at off-campus locations often feel disconnected from the university experience. This feeling of isolation is perhaps most pronounced between semesters, when student contact with the university may be limited to a reminder to register for the following semester – or worse, just a bill for tuition. After the intensity of final exams, the university is simply out of sight, and out of mind.
Meanwhile, faculty members note different sort of disengagement. For example, during a series of faculty development meetings sponsored by the Stevens Center for Faculty & Engagement (CFEA), a frequent observation by several professors was that they often had to spend time at the beginning of each semester reviewing material that students presumably covered in previous classes.
This parallels the observations from corporate training divisions, which according to some estimates collectively spent $90.6 billion dollars in 2017 on employee training programs. Despite these expenditures, the retention of knowledge by trainees was found to be very low.
What both corporate trainers and college professors have been witnessing has been called the “Forgetting Curve,” a theory which purports to show the relationship between time and the loss of memories (in this case, knowledge from instruction) in the absence of a conscious effort to maintain them.
The Boosted Learning technique was created counteract the forgetting curve. It works by essentially reminding employees about training course content through simple quiz questions – after the course has been completed. This approach, designed to stimulate recall and renew interest in specific topics, supports the Kirkpatrick Model for analyzing and evaluating corporate training programs. (The Kirkpatrick Model consists of four levels: student reaction, student learning, student behavior, and student results. Boosted Learning addresses the student learning level most directly -- Level II -- while indirectly impacting the other levels.) Early research suggests that employees who receive “booster” emails after completing a training class will remember the core content that was taught.
After learning about the Boosted Learning concept, Stevens Institute of Technology implemented a pilot project using a web-based system (aptly called “Boosterlearn”) to address both student engagement and student knowledge retention. To the author’s knowledge, Stevens is the first university to attempt to use boosted learning as an extension of academic programs.
The Boosted Learning Initiative at Stevens
To see how boosted learning campaigns might work within the confines of online graduate courses, instructors were recruited to take part in trials in each semester between Fall 2017 – Summer 2019. Each instructor was briefed on the goals and objectives of the boosted learning pilot project and identified 6-10 questions that addressed the core concepts in their classes. Most of the questions were in “multiple choice” format, though the final question in most campaigns used an open-ended “thought question” format similar to discussion postings. The questions were designed to be answered in 1-3 minutes.
Overall, 25 instructors collectively conducted 42 online sections, 6 on-campus sections, and 2 hybrid sections for comparison purposes. A total of 855 students were enrolled within classes where the Boosterlearn system was used.
The specific goals of boosted learning campaigns were outlined as follows:
- Increase student retention of knowledge
- Improve performance in subsequent classes
- Improve job performance
- Add value to the student experience
- Increase student engagement, particularly for remote learners
- Promote a more student-faculty interaction
- Enhance the university’s assessment activities
- Give instructors additional data for continuous improvement activities and course upgrades
- Provide additional data points for accreditation reports
Methods:
In the weeks and months following each semester, weekly emails containing a single course-related question were sent to students. Answers were recorded in a web-based dashboard, which indicated an overall response rate of 15%. After the completion of the post-Fall 2018 semester boosted learning campaigns, students were emailed a short survey about their opinions of the boosted learning initiative. Feedback was generally positive, paving the way for a more widespread adoption at the program level.
Session outline
Attendees of this session will learn about the progress of the implementation of Boosted Learning for individual courses as well as for entire programs at Stevens. Attendees of the session will also practice planning and writing their own booster campaigns based on their own institutional learning programs.
References:
Brown, P., Roediger, H., III,, & McDaniel, M. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.