Science of teaching and learning

Studying the effectiveness and usability of an online authorship verification tool in the laboratory and in the classroom.

Contract cheating is the outsourcing of academic work to a third party with an estimated 23% of postsecondary students engaging in this behaviour (Curtis et al., 2021). Strategies, such as blocking access to contract cheating websites, text-matching software, e-proctoring, visual inspection of assignments, and statistical or computational authorship attribution techniques and other forensic methods, have been implemented to discourage contract cheating. An approach that has not received much attention in the literature is to quiz students to verify their assignment authorship. The premise is that if students engaged in, completed, and submitted their own academic work, their memory of the details of their work should be better than if they had outsourced the work. The goal of this study is to examine the effectiveness of a tool designed to quiz students on their submitted assignments to verify their authorship and explore whether it is a practical, reliable, and valid approach to deter or detect contract cheating. 

This study is being conducted by B. M. Stoesz, M. Quesnel, and R. Guderian (Department of Computer Science)

Use and perceptions of learning management systems

Approximately 2,034,957 Canadians were enrolled in courses at postsecondary institutions in 2015/2016 (Statistics Canada, 2017), and an estimated 610,487 (30%) are completing online courses in any given year (Bates, 2015). This project examined students’ visual perceptions of the learning management systems (LMS) they use and how it influences their learning experiences. Findings contribute to our knowledge of LMS interface design. 
This study was conducted by B. M. Stoesz and M. Niknam. 
Stoesz, B. M., & Niknam, M. (2023). Student perceptions of the visual design of learning management systems. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 48(3), 1-22. https://cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/28154/20689 

Effects of visual complexity of online learning environments on learners 

Delivering courses online can be effective but learning via learning management systems (LMS) may be attenuated by poor visual design. This project aimed to determine if existing models of complexity for webpages can be extended to LMS and explore how individual differences influence ratings of complexity. Findings inform the development of online learning environments. 
This study was conducted by B. M. Stoesz and M. Niknam. 
Stoesz, B. M., Niknam, M., & Sutton, J. (2020). Defining the visual complexity of learning management systems using image metrics and subjective ratings. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 46(2), 1-21. https://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/27899/20497