OWL: a commercial success in chemistry

Chemistry students across the country are now facing what UMass Amherst students have faced for eight years: online homework assignments administered and graded by the Online Web-based Learning system (OWL). Developed by UMass Amherst chemists in collaboration with computer scientists in the Center for Computer-Based Instructional Technology (CCBIT), OWL has been licensed to Thomson Learning for use in chemistry departments nationwide with their popular line of chemistry textbooks. Last year over 35,000 students at more than 100 schools bought OWL access cards shrink-wrapped with their Thomson textbooks. “This successful commercial venture has been over five years in its development, but is now paying dividends as OWL is recognized as the leading product of its type for chemistry homework and the number of users continues to grow,” said CCBIT Executive Director David Hart.

In 1996, CCBIT was enlisted to develop an enhanced, web-based version of an old homework system called Plato that employed the same mastery learning strategy. Over the last nine years, use of OWL has spread to over 20 departments at UMass Amherst and is used by 20,000 seats each year (a “seat” is the use of OWL by one student for one class), or roughly 20% of the homework in first and second year classes.

OWL is advertised as a powerful learning supplement on Thomson's instructor website

Thomson Learning, one of the major college textbook publishers, licensed OWL for use with its general chemistry texts in 2000. After a successful pilot year in 2001, use of the system has tripled each year to the more than 35,000 users in 2004. The number of institutions who continue to use OWL after its initial adoption is 99%. The success of the general chemistry version has led Thomson to license additional OWL applications for preparatory and organic chemistry, and the company is currently negotiating new licenses for nursing chemistry. Expansion to support high school and refresher courses is also planned.

CCBIT staff have worked closely with Thomson and with the chemistry authors at UMass Amherst to make this licensing arrangement a success. CCBIT provides technical support for the Thomson OWL system, which runs on Thomson servers, and develops new features required by Thomson’s users. CCBIT also continues to be a catalyst for new feature development as it integrates innovative OWL advances growing out of campus collaborations into the Thomson system. For example, the use of classroom communication systems for polling in large lecture classes has now been integrated with OWL so that in-class and out-of-class activities are jointly supported in one software environment. This integration was funded by a large foundation grant that allowed CCBIT to work with ten departments in its development, ensuring broad applicability and extensive testing. Thomson customers are clamoring for just such a tool, as the use of classroom communication systems is sweeping the country.

Students use OWL to do chemistry homework, including submission of chemical structure drawings for automatic grading

The chemistry version of OWL emphasizes mastery learning, where students work on problem sets in which they must correctly answer a certain percentage of the questions in order to pass. If they don’t pass, they are allowed to retry the assignment repeatedly on different problem sets until they do. Each time a student tries a problem, the system shows the correct answer and a constructive, highly detailed body of feedback written by the chemistry authors about how the problem should be solved. Through repeated trials and high-quality feedback, students master new concepts and new problem solving skills as they use OWL. UMass Amherst chemistry students work on average between 450 and 500 online homework problems each semester in this fashion.

Chemistry OWL also features extensive use of multimedia simulation and tutorial activities developed by the chemists themselves. These interactive learning tools enhance students’ understanding of the materials and provide critical scaffolding for students who grew up in the Internet age and find this a comfortable learning modality.

The Computer Science Department has used OWL for the last four years in the Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures courses. Professor Robert Moll is principal investigator on a large NSF curriculum development grant to the department supporting the development of OWL homework assignments. Under the grant, OWL has been adapted to compile and evaluate Java code, allowing instructors to write questions that require the submission of code for the answer. This powerful feature has attracted the attention of the computer science division of Thomson Learning, which is currently negotiating with Computer Science and CCBIT to license CS OWL for its textbook line in Java, C++ and other books. This partnership would push the paradigm of OWL to make it a completely online, assessment driven textbook.