Managing Sections on the Course 1.00 Stellar™ Class Website

Course 1.00 teaches fundamental software development and computational methods for engineering and scientific applications. Since it satisfies a requirement, it is a popular and well-enrolled course among undergraduates.

Client Need

Course 1.00 generally enrolls about 100 students in the Fall and over 200 in the Spring. In Fall 2003, instructors agreed to participate in a pilot project for a section management tool. For pedagogical reasons, instructors decided that each section should have about 10 students. Teaching duties would be shared among five TAs.

In the past, the TAs would set up multiple recitation locations and times, collect each student’s top five preferences, and stay up all night for two nights trying to assign sections that satisfied their preferences and schedules. In short, managing sections was an administrative nightmare.

Strategy

The chief architect for course management system and a multimedia designer from AMPS met with the instructors to gather requirements. Instructors wanted a tool that would let students sort out their own schedules and switch sections until a cut-off date. After that date, instructors wanted to be able to move students as needed. Instructors also wanted to accommodate a diversity of teaching styles so that TAs were free to deviate from the standard material and practices.

The Stellar development team designed a tool that let instructors create any number of sections and allowed students to choose and switch among sections until a specified date. Instructors had control of sections after that date.

Each section was a separate website with all of the features of the main class website, plus all homework assignments and materials posted there. Section instructors could tailor the section subsite to their own needs by posting additional materials and assignments and sending email to section members.

Results

Course 1.00 instructors see Stellar as an integral part of course delivery. “We got personal service with a fast turnaround,” said Jedidiah Northridge, head TA for Course 1.00. “The team could always find a strategy to accommodate our needs.”

Instructors liked giving students the responsibility of choosing a section, as well as the flexibility to make changes after the cut-off date. The full-featured section subsites gave instructors the ability to tailor sections to their own unique styles. Students and instructors alike reported no problems with the straightforward user interface.