Another factor that I believe prevented more instructors from using digital and web-based learning tools in the past was the general lack of flexibility these products offered. With earlier programs, instructors were more or less limited to true-false, multiple choice, or—at best—fill-in-the-blank answers. In other words, we could only get the answers we were looking for; there was nothing to encourage creative analysis or higher-ordered thinking among students.
It was impossible to tell whether the student really understood the question or whether he or she was merely parroting back some unconnected, temporarily memorized fact. And there was nothing to prevent students from passing on the answers to others.
Now we have the option of asking algorithmic questions that can be answered correctly with a range of values. This compels students to analyze and truly understand the underlying concepts necessary to establish the correct range.
I use a tool called LearnSmart, one of the offerings from McGraw-Hill’s new learning platform Connect, in my Anatomy and Physiology classes. LearnSmart takes advantage of the most recent developments in Artificial Intelligence to serve as an individual tutor, bringing students along on their own time and at their own pace.
I use LearnSmart to assign basic study of the underlying principles necessary for the following week’s curriculum. LearnSmart provides students with the basic foundation of each unit of study, so that when they come in the following week to learn about the heart, for example, I do not have to spend valuable class time explaining basic concepts such as cardiac output. I can begin immediately applying that definition.
The ability to assess and track student progress individually and automatically grade homework assignments and exams is another powerful tool. I and my adjuncts have reduced the time we spend on grading by 90 percent, and student test scores have risen, on average, 10 points since we began using Connect.
These features prove even more useful and convenient when integrated into one holistic platform where all of the offerings work seamlessly in concert.
Perhaps most appealing from an instructor’s point of view, the latest generation of digital tools allows us to edit and customize our assignments and exams so as to reflect our own individual pedagogical ideas and teaching styles.
This provides us with greater academic freedom in designing and managing our courses—something very important to all of us who teach on the post-secondary level.
Technology is a tool. Although new technologies may excite or intimidate us, they are only useful insofar as they accomplish the work they are meant to do. In the case of education, textbooks were, until very recently, the best technology we had for leading our students from Bloom Taxonomy level one to five.
Today we are seeing the advent of some powerful new digital tools that can replicate what textbooks used to do and more—increasing exponentially our ability to teach and our students’ capacity to learn.
William L. Hoover II, M.D. is an assistant professor of science and engineering at Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC), which enrolls more than 11,000 students on four campuses in Boston, Mass., and the surrounding area. Hoover teaches several sections of Anatomy and Physiology I and II at BHCC and manages up to 15 adjunct instructors who teach the same course.
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