Timothy McKay, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics, has been awarded a grant from the Next Generation Learning Challenge, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates and William and Flora Hewlett foundations.
The grants were awarded to 29 institutions for projects that improve learning and graduation rates through the use of technology.
McKay will use new software to provide individualized expert coaching for thousands of students in large introductory physics courses. Known as ECoach, the system will provide thousands of undergraduate physics students with the advice, training and encouragement that they need to achieve at the highest levels.
The one-year pilot program will be launched during the winter 2012 semester. The grant was for $249,000.
“Too few students come to see me when I have office hours,” McKay says. “This is what I would tell them if they were sitting in front of me, and I would like to reach them all.”
The ECoach program combines next generation learning analytics with the best of behavioral change theory, McKay says. He and his group of researchers have studied how more than 48,000 U-M students have progressed through their introductory physics courses, identifying patterns of behavior which lead them to perform better and sometimes worse than expected.
“The ability of computers to gather and process incomprehensible quantities of data is finally being brought to bear on our greatest challenge — how to give each student the educational experience which is most effective for them,” he says. “Our project is a step toward an adaptive future in which computers not only give us access to a world of information, but understand who we are and what would most help us to achieve our goals.”
ECoach is made possible because of prior work on the Michigan Tailoring System, developed by Victor Strecher, director of U-M’s Center for Health Communications Research, and Edward Saunders, deputy director of the center.
