Transcript Designing a SENCER Course

Designing Effective and
Innovative Courses
A Practical Strategy
Roanoke College INQ 300 Development Workshop
August 15-16, 2012
Adapted from a model developed for The Cutting Edge by
Barbara J. Tewksbury
Hamilton College
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html
Applying the Science of Learning
(Halpern and Hakel)
Goal: Teaching for long term retention and transfer
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Provide repeated, spaced practice at retrieval
Vary conditions under which learning happens
Have students re-present information in new format
Assess students’ prior knowledge and experience
Confront students’ belief that learning should be easy
Give systematic and corrective feedback
Use lectures for recognition but not understanding
Expect “selective forgetting” of info not reinforced
Recognize depth/breadth tradeoff
Focus on what students do, not what professors do
Aim of this workshop
Introduce a practical strategy for designing an INQ
300 course that:
– gets students to think for themselves in the context
of a contemporary issue
– stresses inquiry and de-emphasizes traditional direct
instruction
– emphasizes relevance, transferability, and future use
– builds in authentic assessment
– passes muster with our Curriculum Committee!
How are courses commonly designed?
• Make list of content items important to
coverage of the field
• Develop syllabus by organizing items into
topical outline
• Flesh out topical items in lectures, recitations,
discussions, labs
• Test knowledge learned in course
What’s missing?
• Consideration of what your students need or
could use, particularly after the course is over
• Articulation of desired student learning
outcomes beyond content/coverage
• Focus on student learning and problem
solving rather than on coverage of material by
the instructor
An alternative approach
Emphasis on designing a course in which:
• Students learn significant and
appropriate content and skills
• But students also have practice in
thinking for themselves and solving
problems
• Students leave the course prepared to
use their knowledge and skills in the
future
Over 30 years of research documents
collaborative learning’s positive effect on …
• content mastery
• critical thinking ability
• problem solving ability
• development of interpersonal skills (highly valued
by employers)
Barkley, E.F., Cross, K.P., Major, C.H. (2005). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T., & Smith, K.A. (1991). Cooperative learning: Increasing college faculty instructional
productivity. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports, No. 4. Washington, DC: GW University.
An aside on terminology
• Design model is focused on learning
outcomes
• Learning outcomes should be
– concrete and
– measurable (“My goal in life is to make a
million $$”; “My goal next year is to win on
Jeopardy!”).
Overview of this approach
• Articulating context and audience
• Setting learning outcomes
– Overarching learning outcomes
– Skills learning outcomes
• Achieving desired outcomes through selecting
content
• Developing a course plan with assignments,
activities, and assessments to achieve the
desired outcomes
Step I: Context and audience
Our course design process begins with
answering the following:
– Who are my students?
– What do they need?
– What are the needs of the curriculum?
– What are the constraints and support structure?
The Students in INQ 300
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Mostly seniors, a few juniors
20% transfers, 80% entered as freshman
Most around 21 years old
Any major
Completed INQ Core
– INQ 110 and INQ 120
– 200-level Perspectives courses
– 90% took INQ 240 Statistics
The Intellectual Inquiry Curriculum
• Critical inquiry into important questions
• Methods of and questions asked by
– Social Sciences
– Natural Sciences
– Mathematics
– Humanities
The Intellectual Inquiry Curriculum
Skills—all revisited in INQ 300
– Writing
– Oral communication
– Quantitative reasoning
– Research/Information literacy
– Collaboration
INQ 300 requires students to
• work in small groups to
• research and
• draw on information and perspectives
from all three divisions to
• develop a proposal concerning a concept,
approach, or solution to a contemporary
problem that will be
• presented in a formal oral defense.
INQ instructors should
Pose a question or topic in such a way that
• students can draw on information and
perspectives from all three divisions,
• encourages research and creative application
of facts to a contemporary problem so as to
• students arrive at, propose, and defend a
solution.
• allows students to draw from their previous
work
INQ 300 Course Requirements
• Include a number of intellectually rigorous
readings, along with any other types of source
materials relevant to the instructors’ disciplines.
• Ask students to complete four kinds of tasks. The
particular way these tasks are completed is up to
the instructor:
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Application of previous work to the course topic
Individual Writing
Group Assignment (may incorporate individual work)
Oral defense of group assignment.
Course Structure
In order to make time for the required group
project, faculty may wish to
• Meet in a seminar style for the first portion of
the course
• Meet as a class only occasionally in later
portions of the course
• Spend significant time meeting with small
groups to monitor progress
Assessment Needs
• Individual paper scored on INQ Rubric
• Oral presentation (individual or group) scored
on INQ Rubric
• Administer QR Test (multiple choice)
• Collect final projects electronically.
– Archive
– Rubric-scored by faculty other than instructor
– Also scored by instructor??? Rubric under
development
Task #1: Context, Constraints, and
Opportunities
• What are the primary challenges posed by the
context and constraints?
• What opportunities are presented by the
context and constraints that you could take
advantage of in course design?
Step 2: Setting student-focused
overarching & skill learning outcomes
• Shouldn’t we be asking what we want the
students to be able to do as a result of having
completed the course, rather than what the
instructor will expose them to?
• Need to focus on what the students do, not
the teacher
Setting student-focused,
overarching learning outcomes
• Example from an art history course
– Give students a survey of art from a particular
period
Vs.
– Enable students to go to an art museum and
evaluate technique of an unfamiliar work or
evaluate an unfamiliar work in its historical
context or evaluate a work in the context of a
particular artistic genre/school/style
Setting student-focused, overarching
learning outcomes
• Example from a bio course
– Provide an overview of topics in general biology
Vs.
– Enable students to evaluate claims in the popular
press or seek out and evaluate information or
make informed decisions about issues involving
genetically-engineered crops, stem cells, DNA
testing, HIV AIDS, etc.
Common denominator
• What sorts of things do you do simply because you are a
professional in your discipline? For example, a geologist
might
– use the geologic record to reconstruct the past
and to predict the future.
– look at houses on floodplains, and wonder how
people could be so stupid
– hear the latest news from Mars and say, well that
must mean that….
Verbs for learning outcomes involving
lower order thinking skills
• Knowledge, comprehension, application
list
explain
calculate
identify
describe
mix
recognize
paraphrase
prepare
Examples of learning outcomes
involving lower order thinking skills
• At the end of this course, I want students to
be able to:
– List the major contributing factors in the spread of disease.
– Identify common rocks and minerals.
– Describe how the Doppler shift provides information about
moving objects, and give an illustrative example.
– Cite examples of poor land use practice.
– Discuss the major ways that AIDS is transmitted.
– Calculate standard deviation for a set of data.
Examples of learning outcomes
involving lower order thinking skills
While some of these learning outcomes involve
a deeper level of knowledge and
understanding than others, the goals are
largely reiterative.
Verbs for learning outcomes involving
higher order thinking skills
• Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, some types of
application
derive
predict
analyze
design
interpret
synthesize
formulate
evaluate
create
Examples of learning outcomes
involving higher order thinking skills
At the end of this course, I want students to be
able to:
– Make an informed decision about a controversial
topic not covered in class involving . . .
– Collect and analyze data in order to . . .
– Design models of . . .
– Solve unfamiliar problems in . . .
– Find and evaluate information/data on . . .
– Predict the outcome of . . .
Examples of learning outcomes
involving higher order thinking skills
• What makes these different from the previous
set is that they are analytical, rather than
reiterative.
• Focus is on new and different situations.
• Emphasis is on integrating skills, abilities,
knowledge, and understanding.
Why are overarching outcomes
important?
If you want students to be good at something,
they must practice; therefore, learning
outcomes drive both course design and
assessment.
Learning outcomes should be…
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Student-centered
Focused on higher order thinking skills
Concrete
Comprised of measurable outcomes
Setting skill learning outcomes
• Example skills
– Accessing and reading the professional literature
– Working in teams
– Writing, quantitative skills, oral presentation
– Critically assessing information on the web
• These may be elements of overarching
outcomes or may be their own outcomes
Common Learning Outcomes for INQ 300
1. Students will apply their research findings to
a formal project addressing the course topic
question and will successfully present this
proposal in an oral defense.
2. Students will write well-organized and clearly
reasoned papers both individually and with a
group. Papers will have clear theses,
effective organization, and a minimum of
sentence-level errors.
Common Learning Outcomes for INQ 300
3. Students will contribute to meaningful,
effective discussion and collaborative work
that includes expressing, listening to, and
debating ideas.
4. Students will be able to apply critical thinking
and quantitative reasoning skills in a
meaningful way.
Common Learning Outcomes for INQ 300
5. Students will make explicit, meaningful
connections between past course work (both
in the core and in their majors) and
contemporary issues.
6. Students will demonstrate understanding of
a contemporary issue or problem, an
awareness of the types of inquiry needed to
understand it, and the resources required for
addressing it.
Step 3: Achieving outcomes through
selecting content topics / issues /
problems
• What general content topics could you
use to achieve the overarching learning
outcomes of your INQ 300 course?
• Recall the constraints & opportunities
INQ 300 Content Topics
• Contemporary issue or problem
• Amenable to group project format
• Enable students to revisit previous courses
– INQ (draw from all three divisions)
– Major
• Encourage research
• Encourage creative approaches
• Encourage meaningful critical thinking
What about the problem …
• Should the problem arise from a contemporary
issue?
• Should everyone in the class work on the same
problem? Should different groups have
different problems?
• Should the students propose the problem or be
given the problem?
• How focused should the problem be?
• Does there need to be a concrete, workable
solution to the problem?
Task #2: Begin to develop a course
framework
• Pick a theme or topic for your INQ 300 course.
• Write an overarching content learning
outcome for your course (heed four criteria for
good goals).
• Brainstorm problems that fit within this
theme.
On the large Post-It:
• Your name
• Any other important info on context,
challenges, and opportunities
• Theme or topic or title
• One overarching content learning outcome
• Additional skill outcomes, if desired
• Possible problems for students to address
Learning outcomes should be…
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Student-centered
Focused on higher order thinking skills
Concrete
Comprised of measurable outcomes