What is the effect of software tool adoption on the implementation (design & delivery) of a large enrollment course? This project seeks to answer this question by investigating the use of instructional technology tools that help facilitate feedback, assessment, and interaction in large enrollment (>50 students) courses.

The project includes 32 faculty participants from 7 SUNY campuses. At the start of the project, faculty were asked to identify one area of their large course that they would like to improve upon. This included student engagement, grading and feedback, content curation, and student collaboration. Participants then reviewed a variety of applications that would address these areas. Six tools were identified targeting each of these areas and faculty were able to choose which tool was appropriate to address the area they wanted to improve upon. The tools included: Gradescope, Piazza, Perusall, Kritic, Yellow Dig and Campus Knot. Participants attended sessions on effective pedagogy in large courses, and received instructional design assistance on how to design and deliver their course using the tool they selected.

For the assessment, participants completed two surveys (one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end) and participated in focus groups to discuss their experiences in using their selected tools and how they impacted course delivery. Their students were also surveyed about their experience with the tool. The results of the assessment will be made available in summer 2023.