Learing Effect of Using a Computer-Aided Instruction on Biostatistics through Internet

Either for the teachers or the students, it is always a challenge to teach or learn biostatistics. We were honored that the National Science Council provided us a funding for developing a computer-aided instruction (CAI) for the biostatistics course in 2002-2003. Up to this moment, six units of biostatistics CAI have been done. However, we cannot conclude whether the learning effect of CAI is better than that of traditional teaching (lecture), or vise versa. As the whole session of evaluation of our biostatistics CAI had to complete in 3 hours and in a classroom, students could not use CAI to learn the course material in their own pace. Furthermore, the learning effect of CAI we have looked at only implied the instant learning effect of CAI or traditional teaching. Hence, we propose this three-year study and wish to accomplish: (1) setup a website in which allows students to login and logout, manages the timing of using the website, has a bulletin board for students to discuss the problem of learning, and include the biostatistics CAI (August 2007 to January 2009, one and half year). (2) Compare the learning effect between traditional teaching (control group; February to May 2008) and internet CAI learning (experimental group; February to May 2009) for the biostatistics course. At the second week and one week after the mid-term of the course, one questionnaire about learning motivation, strategy, meta-cognition (developed by the principal investigator, See LC) and another questionnaire about learning attitude, motivation, management of timing, anxiety, concentration of studying, management of message, selection of important points, other assisted learning methods, self-testing, strategy of preparing examination, strategy of problem solving (中國行為學社的「大學生學習與讀書策略量表」) will be filled out by two groups of students. The satisfaction questionnaire about the course will be given one week after the midterm. Six chapters of the biostatistics course will be talk from the third to eighth week of the course. Ten multiple choice questions for each chapter will be given to obtain the short term effect of learning. A midterm exam (with multiple choice questions and short assays for all 6 chapters) will be given to obtain the long term effect of learning. (3) Data management, statistical analysis, and manuscript writing will be done in the third year (August 2009 to July 2010). We expect that our website of CAI biostatistics can provide teachers and students a good assisted material to learn biostatistics material. Our finding can provide a better answer about the learning effect of CAI biostatistics.

Project ID:PF9706-0928
External Project ID:NSC96-2520-S182-003-MY3