Our online experiment: Interactive learning resources for STEM disciplines.

Teaching high enrolment introductory science courses presents many challenges. The diversity of student backgrounds means that there is high variability in their knowledge and skills. Some students need a high level of remedial support while others desire enrichment. There are also significant logistical challenges, including grading assignments or quizzes in a timely fashion while also providing students with personalized feedback to help them self-assess their learning progress. At Waterloo, we are developing online resources for the STEM disciplines that will fundamentally change the way we teach our students and help us address the challenges we described. These resources are being created using Möbius, a courseware environment specifically designed for instructors to create and deliver their own online, interactive content. A typical lesson combines text, images, animations, narrated video, interactive apps, and dynamically-generated questions that are graded instantly to provide “in-the-moment” feedback. In this session, we will discuss the reasons why we chose Mobius and the decisions we made in designing our online lessons. We will invite participants to act as students for a demonstration of online lessons created for our high enrolment, first-year general chemistry courses. We will address how our approach transfers to other STEM disciplines and facilitate an open discussion about how online resources might be used to overcome the challenges encountered in teaching introductory courses in the STEM disciplines