Title: Using an Online Interactive Textbook for Content Delivery in a large on-campus Mathematics for Economists course.

The Covid pandemic forced lecturers to rethink the way content is delivered to students. Live online lectures and pre-recorded video recordings became standard tools of synchronous and asynchronous content delivery respectively. Reading materials (textbooks or lecture provided notes) also often supplement the content delivery, but are not usually used as the sole source of new content.

We present summary findings regarding the use of an online, interactive textbook-type resource. This resource combined text-based content delivery with interspersed pre-recorded online videos and questions (with instantaneous feedback to students) to check students’ understanding. This resource was produced for a large Mathematics for Economists unit with 900+ students in the pandemic affected academic years 2020/21 and 2021/22. In the second of these years this resource was used despite on-campus lectures being available again as a tool.

While the online textbook was used to deliver the content asynchronously, there were twice-weekly Review and Q&A sessions in which students could bring up any questions and problems and in which the lecturer would review some of the key concepts introduced in the online lessons.

We present findings on the usage pattern of the resource as well as student feedback. The student feedback presented, leads to the conclusion that, even as on-campus lecture delivery is becoming available again, a future blend of learning activities can include substantial asynchronous content delivery. This flipped classroom setup is attractive as it can create the space in synchronous meetings to focus on active student learning which has proved to contribute positively to learning outcomes (Freeman et al . (2014).

The online textbook allows us to observe patterns of study we cannot normally observe. The amount of time spend on the learning resource and its timing as well as the engagement with the feedback questions allows us to identify some of the study patterns of successful and less successful students.

Organiser: Subhasish Dey