Runestone Academy webinar July 14-17
Bradley Miller
Are you interested in free and interactive ebooks for your undergraduate computing and math courses? Do you wish students paid more attention during lectures? Do you want students to practice more? Do you want to give auto-graded timed exams online? Would you like to help struggling students learn and not have them just use generative AI to just do their work for them?
Come to a series of free webinars on the open-source Runestone Academy free ebook platform from July 14th to 17th at 3:00pm EDT. Register at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdZYoOeniHoHgTk_eQueuVXpUqJlF5BKPZlvbXy5kNch1TY-g/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=114366167398593852141
Monday July 14th, 3:00pm - Getting started with Runestone: introduction, history, ebooks, and interactive features. Also, how Dr. Ericson uses an ebook in her intermediate Python programming course.
Tuesday July 15th, 3:00pm - Instructor interface: creating a custom book for your students, enrolling students, creating assignments: browsing for existing questions in chapters, searching for questions, and writing your own questions.
Wednesday July 16, 3:00pm - Instructor interface continued: creating a timed exam, resetting a student's exam, grading assignments, using LTI, downloading the gradebook, downloading log files, and help and support
Thursday July 17th, 3:00pm - Peer Instruction: experience it, the instructor interface, best practices, review page, how to find existing PI questions, how to author new PI questions
Runestone has over 90 free ebooks for computing and math courses. There are books for introductory programming (CS0 and CS1) and data structures (CS2) in Python, Java, and C++. There are also books for calculus, discrete math, algebra, linear algebra, and other advanced mathematics. The ebooks have text, images, and videos. They also have interactive exercises such as multiple-choice questions, fill in the blank questions, matching questions, and clickable area questions, and support for WeBWorK.
Students can write and run code in the ebook and step through code using a version of Python tutor. There is also support for Peer Instruction in which an instructor shows a hard multiple-choice question and students answer individually, then discuss with peers, and then answer individually again. Decades of research show that Peer Instruction improves student learning and motivation over passive lecture. Runestone also includes a practice tool that instructors can set up to encourage students to space out their practice. Research shows improved final exam scores when students use this tool. There is also an auto-graded timed exam which can be used for quizzes, midterms, and final exams.
Professor Emeritus, Luther College
Founder, Runestone Academy LTD
Blog: http://reputablejournal.com
Set up a time to meet with me.