Instructor-moderated chat rooms may enhance students' learning and even result in higher test performances than the typical review study sessions, according to research by Ed Glantz, a first-year doctoral student in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST).
Glantz recently took second place in the Social and Behavioral Sciences poster category at this year's Graduate Exhibition where he presented his ongoing research, "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Moderated Chat Rooms for Student Exam Reviews - Preliminary Results."
Also an instructor in the Smeal College of Business, Glantz teaches two sections of an introductory undergraduate course in information systems that averages more than 300 business majors a section. The class size has frustrated Glantz, who has long wanted to supplement lecture-based instruction with smaller, more responsive and more interactive learning environments.
Last fall, he hit upon chat rooms as a possible means and implemented them in his Spring 2003 courses.
Glantz holds the chat-room sessions at 9:30 p.m. Thursdays after the more traditional face-to-face review session. Transcripts from the hour-long chat rooms have been posted on the university's ANGEL system.
Student surveys had revealed that of all of ANGEL's features, chat room was perceived as the least useful.
"I took that as a challenge," said Glantz, who worked in manufacturing and telecommunications for 20 years before joining Penn State. "And students are chatting all day long, so why not use that capacity in ANGEL?"
Although still collecting data, Glantz said his initial impressions are students like the chat-room reviews and find them a "convenient and effective alternative for learning." Another advantage: Students with conflicting schedules still can access the information through the posted transcripts.
Best yet is that students have improved their performance on the course's two tests to date.
Glantz hopes the data from surveys and personality tests also will provide insight into whether certain groups of students benefit more from chat rooms.
"The goal is not to replace large-section instruction which definitely has its place," Glantz said. "But augmenting it with instructor-moderated chat rooms allows the introduction of constructivist learning which has been shown to enhance and improve student learning."
The annual Graduate Exhibition offers graduate students an opportunity to share their ongoing and completed research with members of the broader university community.
Also recognized was Roderick Lee, another doctoral student, whose research on the perception and use of information technologies by community-based organizations won third at the exhibition.
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