Transcript Designing Effective and Innovative Courses Barbara J. Tewksbury Department of Geosciences Hamilton College [email protected] http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops Interview questions  Interview and prepare to introduce the person sitting next to.

Designing Effective
and Innovative Courses
Barbara J. Tewksbury
Department of Geosciences
Hamilton College
[email protected]
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops
Interview questions
 Interview and prepare to introduce the
person sitting next to you. Find out:
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Name, institution
What course is she/he designing or
redesigning?
What excites him/her about the prospect
of designing and teaching this course?
What concerns does she/he have about
designing and teaching this course?
Aims of this workshop
 Take you through a process to design an
effective, innovative, and challenging
course
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Students learn significant and appropriate
content and skills
Students have practice in thinking for
themselves and solving problems in the
discipline
Students leave the course prepared to use
their knowledge and skills in the future
What kind of
course are we after?
“Challenging courses are those
that lead students into
situations where the only way
out is through thinking”
Iris Weiss, 2005, unpub. materials
from an NRC-MSP conference
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??
 Articulation of what your students
need
 Articulation of goals beyond
content/coverage goals
 Deliberate consideration of
strategies to achieve goals beyond
content goals
 Plan for evaluation of success
An alternative
goals-based approach
 Brings same kind of introspection,
intellectual rigor, systematic
documentation, and evaluation to
teaching that each of us brings to
our research
 Really shakes the tree and
designs the course from the
bottom up
 Assessment falls out naturally
Overview of the workshop
 Articulating context and audience
 Setting goals
Setting overarching goals
• Setting ancillary skills goals
• Choosing content to achieve the goals
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 Developing a course plan
Exploring teaching strategies
• Developing a course outline with
assignments, activities and assessments to
give students practice in goals-related tasks
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 Following through
Does it work?
 7 years of workshops on Designing
Effective and Innovative Courses in the
Geosciences
 Now part of NSF-funded On the Cutting
Edge program
(http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops)
 New online tutorial
 An effective design template
 !!Not the only way to design a course!!
An aside on terminology
 Design model is goals-focused
 Terminology: goals vs. objectives vs.
outcomes vs. learning goals vs. learning
objectives vs. learning outcomes
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Geology faculty at our workshops largely
not fluent in edu-speak
Some have encountered terms defined
differently in different venues
Our workshop participants wasted time
and energy coping with the distinctions
An aside on terminology
 The problem with the word “learning”
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The brown bread example
brown bread
brown bread
brown bread
An aside on terminology
 The problem with the word “learning”
“I am in the middle of learning
research techniques in
geomicrobiology.”
• “I am finding out more about
learning research in the
geosciences.”
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 Ditto learning objectives and learning
outcomes
An aside on terminology
 For our workshops, we have collapsed
goals, objectives and outcomes into
one standard English term “goals”.
 Goals for us will be concrete and
measurable (“My goal in life is to make
a million $$”; “My goal next year is to
make the Olympic sock wrestling
team.”)
 Avoided “learning” as an adjective.
Step I: Context and audience
 Our course design process begins
with answering the following:
Who are my students?
• What do they need?
• Can’t set goals effectively until
these questions are answered
• What are the constraints and
support structure?
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Task: context & constraints
 Go to page 1 of the assignments.
 Answer each question first, and
then, if you have time, go back and
consider the challenges and
opportunities presented by what
you consider to be the most
important aspect(s) of context and
constraints
Step 2: overarching goals
 Teaching is commonly viewed as
being teacher-centered.
 Reinforced by the teaching
evaluation process
 Commonly reinforced by how we
phrase course goals: “I want to
expose my students to….” or “I
want to teach my students that…”
or “I want to show students that…”
Step 2: overarching goals
 “It dawned on me about two
weeks into the first year that it was
not teaching that was taking place
in the classroom, but learning.”
Pop star Sting, reflecting upon
his early career as a teacher
Step 2: overarching goals
 We can’t do a student’s
learning for him/her
 Need to set course goals for
the students, not the teacher
Goals phrased as
student-focused goals
 At the end of this course, students
will be able to…”
 Focuses on student learning
 Helps us get over thinking of
course as an opportunity for
teacher to expose students to
something or teach them about
something
Goals phrased as students
being able to do something
 What do you want your students to
be able to do after they have taken
your course?
 Which would we rather have?
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I want my students to have a strong
background in ____
OR
I want my students to use their strong
background in order to do ____
Goals phrased as students
being able to do something
 Helps us focus beyond content
coverage/mastery
 Helps us focus beyond the end of the
semester – what value has the course
added to student lives, abilities, and skill
sets?
 Helps us see a path from goals to course
design - makes very clear what kind of
practice students must receive in the
course to become good at the “doing”
Goals have potential
to transform a course
 Example from an art history course
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Survey of art from a particular period
Vs.
Enabling 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
Goals have potential
to transform a course
 Example from a math course
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Practice in particular techniques (stats,
calc, diff eq)
Vs.
Enabling students to evaluate statistical
claims in the popular press/advertising or
analyze applications of calculus in
unfamiliar situations or solve unfamiliar
real-world problems in
science/engineering
Goals have potential
to transform a course
 Example from a history course
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Survey of history of a particular time
period
Vs.
Enabling students to evaluate an
unfamiliar event in its historical context or
reconstruct an unfamiliar historical event
from different viewpoints or a familiar
historical event from a new viewpoint or
seek out and evaluate information about
an unfamiliar historical event
Goals have potential
to transform a course
 Example from an education course
Survey of results of research on
learning
Vs.
• Enabling students to design
classroom activities for students that
are consistent with educational
theory and the science of learning.
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Goals have potential
to transform a course
 A course should enable
students, at appropriate level, to
do what professionals do in the
discipline, not just expose them
to what professionals know.
So, what do professionals do?
 What sorts of things do you do simply
because you are a professional in your
discipline??
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I use the geologic record to reconstruct
the past
I use geologic past to predict the future
I look at houses on floodplains, and
wonder how people could be so stupid
I hear the latest news from Mars and say,
well that must mean that….
So, what do professionals do?
 Physicist: predicts outcomes based
on calculations from first principles
 Art historian: assesses works of art
 Historian: interprets historical
account in light of the source of
information
 English prof: analyzes prose/poetry
Task: What do you do?
 Your course should enable your students,
at appropriate level, to do what you do in
your discipline, not just expose them to
what you know.
 Go to page 5 of the assignments.
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In context of general course topic, what do
you do? What does analyze, evaluate, etc.
involve?
Alternatively, what is unique about your
world view/the view of your discipline??
Goals involving lower
order thinking skills tasks
 Knowledge, comprehension,
application
list
explain
calculate
identify
describe
know about
recognize
paraphrase
prepare
Examples of goals involving
lower order thinking skills
 At the end of this course, I want students
to be able to:
List the periods of the geologic time scale
• Recognize examples of pointilist art
• Label a time line with the dates of major
events leading up to World War I.
• Calculate standard deviation for a set of
data
• Know about Earth systems
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Examples of goals involving
lower order thinking skills
 At the end of this course, I want
students to be able to:
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Compare and contrast
transcendentalism and existentialism.
Describe how the Doppler shift
provides information about moving
objects, and give an illustrative
example.
Explain how stem cells form and what
applications might be developed.
Goals involving higher
order thinking skills tasks
 Analysis, synthesis, evaluation,
some types of application
derive
predict
analyze
design
interpret
synthesize
formulate
evaluate
create
Examples of goals involving
higher order thinking skills
 At the end of this course, I want
students to be able to:
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Develop and test age-appropriate
lesson plans.
Analyze an unfamiliar work of art (which
is different form recalling those covered
in class)
Evaluate the historical context of an
unfamiliar event.
Frame a hypothesis and formulate a
research plan.
Examples of goals involving
higher order thinking skills
 At the end of this course, I want students
to be able to:
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Collect and analyze data in order to ___
Design models of ___
Solve unfamiliar problems in ____
Find and evaluate information/data on ____
Predict the outcome of ____
Why are overarching
goals important?
 If you want students to be good at
something, they must practice.
 Goals drive both the course plan
and assessment
 Goals are the underpinnings of
your course and serve as the
basis for developing activities to
meet those goals.
What kind of goals to set?
 Higher order or lower order
thinking skills?
 Measurable outcomes or not?
 Abstract or concrete goals?
Setting goals phrased with
higher order thinking skills
 Overarching goals involving lower
order thinking skills are imbedded in
ones involving higher order thinking
skills
 “being able to interpret tectonic
settings based on information on
physiography, seismicity, and volcanic
activity” has imbedded in it many goals
involving lower order thinking skills
Setting goals phrased with
higher order thinking skills
 Helps us focus on developing
students’ abilities to think for
themselves and solve problems in
the discipline while still addressing
mastery of content
 Helps us integrate assessment from
the beginning that goes beyond recall
and reiteration
Setting “measurable” goals
 Easier to design a course when overarching
goals phrased so that you could imagine
tasks that students could perform that would
show whether they had mastered the content
and skills of the course.
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I want students to be able to interpret
unfamiliar tectonic settings based on
information on physiography, volcanic activity,
and seismicity (measurable).
Vs.
I want students to understand plate tectonics
(not directly measurable).
Setting concrete goals
 Abstract goals are laudable but difficult
to assess directly and difficult translate
into practical course design
I want students to appreciate the
complexity of Earth systems.
• I want students to think like scientists.
 Setting concrete goals helps us get beyond
laudable but vague aims
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Task: evaluating goals
 Go to page 6.
 Determine if each goal:
• Is student-focused
• Involves higher-order thinking skills
tasks
• Is a measurable goal
• Is concrete, rather than vague and
abstract
 For goals that don’t measure up, how
would you improve them?
Task: write overarching goals
for your course
 Go to page 8.
 Draft overarching goals for your
course
 1-3 overarching goals is ideal.
 There is no one right set of
overarching goals for a particular
course topic.
 Heed the guidelines!!
On your large Post-It sheet
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Your name and institution
Course title, level, and # of students
Prerequisites, if any
Does your course serve as
prerequisite for other courses?
 Any other important context info
 First draft of overarching goals
Step 3: Setting ancillary
skills goals
 Ancillary skills
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Accessing and reading the geologic
literature
Working in teams
Writing and quantitative skills
Critically assessing information on
the web
Self-teaching, peer teaching, oral
presentation
Importance of limiting number
of ancillary skills goals
 To improve skills, students need
repeated practice and timely
feedback
 Hard to provide adequate practice
and feedback unless goals are
limited.
Task: write ancillary skills
goals for your course
 Go to page 9.
 Set 1-2 ancillary skills goals
 Make sure that you are prepared
to provide students with practice
and timely feedback !!
Step 4: Achieving goals thru
selecting content topics
 What general content topics
could you use to achieve the
overarching goals of your
course?
Example from a
geo hazards course
 Overarching goal: students will
be able to research and evaluate
news reports of a natural disaster
and communicate their analyses
to someone else
Be able to research and evaluate news
reports of a natural disaster and
communicate analyses to someone else
 Instructor #1 chose four specific
disasters as content topics
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1973 Susquehanna flood
Landsliding in coastal California
Mt. St. Helens
Armenia earthquake
Be able to research and evaluate news
reports of a natural disaster and
communicate analyses to someone else
 Instructor #2 chose four themes as
content topics
Impact of hurricanes on building
codes and insurance
• Perception and reality of fire
damage on the environment
• Mitigating the effects of volcanic
eruptions
• Geologic and sociologic realities of
earthquake prediction
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Be able to research and evaluate news
reports of a natural disaster and
communicate analyses to someone else
 Instructor #3 chose to focus on a
historical survey of natural disasters in
Vermont
Historical record of flooding in NW
Vermont
• 1983 landsliding
• 2-3 other places in Vermont that have
had natural disasters of different types.
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Goals and content topics unite to
provide course framework
 Previous example
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Single goal; each instructor could achieve
goal even though content topics different
Choice of content topics drives how the
instructor will accomplish the goal.
Students will receive different kinds of
practice during the course even though
the overall goal is the same
Course very different from survey course
derived from list of content topics
Goals and content topics unite to
provide course framework
 How about a different goal for the same
hazards course?
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Students should be able to evaluate and
predict the influence of climate, hydrology,
biology, and geology on the severity of a
natural disaster.
Could we use the same content topics?
Yes!
How would the courses be different? In the
activities developed to accomplish the
goals and the type of practice students
receive!!
Intersection of context,
goals, and content
 Research & evaluate news report or
evaluate and predict influence of
climate, hydro, geo, bio on the severity
of a natural hazard?
 Which goal makes most sense for who
your students are and what they need?
 Which content topics make the most
sense for your students, your setting,
your experience, your students’ futures?
Fleshing out content topics
 Higher order thinking skills goals
have imbedded in them lower order
thinking skills goals
 Broad content topics have
imbedded in them many concepts
and content items that would be
covered in a standard survey
course
Fleshing out content topics
 Geology and Development of
Modern Africa
 Not a “Geology of Africa” course
 Overarching goal: students will be
able to analyze the underlying
influence of geology on human
events
 Context is Africa, although goal is
more general
Fleshing out content topics
 Content topic #1: influence of climate
change on prehistoric settlement patterns
in North Africa
 Imbedded content items
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Geologic content knowledge: 14C dating,
fossils, lacustrine sedimentation,
stratigraphic columns, using sedimentary
rocks to interpret paleoenvironments,
geologic time scale,….
Fleshing out content topics
 Content topic #2: influence of
development of East African Rift on
hominid evolution
 Imbedded content items
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Geologic content knowledge: formation
and evolution of continental rifts,
radiometirc dating, rift volcanisms,
stratigraphic columns, fossils, using
sedimentary rocks to interpret
paleoenvironments, geologic time scale,
fluvial and alluvial processes, faulting,
geologic history of East Africa, evolution
Selecting content coverage
 A course that is not a survey
course can be content-rich
 Courses with depth rather than
breadth are viable alternative
 Topic coverage doesn’t have to be
linear
Selecting content coverage
 Can meet content expectations for
subsequent courses if topics
selected carefully
 Combination of clearly-stated
goals and specific content topics
provides clear pathway to
designing practice for students in
tasks related to the goal
Other examples of choosing
broad content topics
 Goal: Students will be able to help
future elementary school students
ID rocks and help them with
interpretations
 Broad content topics: 3 locations
with different bedrock geology
around which to build different rock
interpretation activities
Other examples of choosing
broad content topics
 Goal: Students will be able to use
data from recent Mars missions to
re-evaluate pre-2004 hypotheses
about Mars geologic processes
and evolution
 Broad content topics: 1) origin of
drainage networks, 2) extent of
intermediate to silicic rocks, 3)
origin of layered rocks
Other examples of choosing
broad content topics
 Goal: Students will be able to make
observations of rx and thin sections and
collect field data to evaluate conditions of
deformation and deformation mechanisms
responsible for structures and fabrics and,
where possible, deformation history in a
sequence of rocks.
 Broad content topics: three case studies,
1) brittle def features in Capitol Reef, 2)
brittle and ductile features in SW Tibet, 3)
ditto in eastern NY state with wrap-up field
trip
Task: choose content topics to
achieve overarching goals
 Go to page10.
 List your overarching goal(s).
 For each, list possible broad content
topics that you could use to achieve
that goal.
 For each content topic, begin a list of
imbedded content items that students
must master to achieve the goal using
that topic.
Developing a course plan
 For each overarching goal, how
will you lead students to the point
where they can do ____ on their
own?
 Alternative phrasing: how will you
give students practice in doing
____?
Choosing classroom strategies
 As you enter a classroom, ask
yourself this question: “If there were
no students in the classroom, could
I do what I am planning to do?” If
the answer to the question is yes,
don’t do it.
General Ruben Cubero, Dean of the
Faculty, United States Air Force Academy
(Novak et al., 1999, Just-in-Time Teaching)
Importance of having a
teaching toolbox
 If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail.
 Same goes for teaching. If the only
tool in your teaching toolbox is
lecturing, then….
Importance of having a
teaching toolbox
 Learn about successful student-active
assignment/activity strategies
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think-pair-share, jigsaw, discussion,
simulations, role-playing, concept mapping,
concept sketches, debates, long-term
projects, research-like experiences….
assignments involving writing, poster, oral
presentation, service learning….
 Make deliberate choices of the best
strategy for the task.
Importance of integrating
assessment & course design
 If having students meet the goals is
important, assessment is a “natural”
 Example: Students will be able to
evaluate and predict the influence of
climate, hydrology, biology, and
geology on the severity of a natural
disaster.
Give students an unfamiliar example
• Can they do it??
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Importance of integrating
assessment & course design
 What students receive grades on must
be tasks that allow you to evaluate
whether students have met the course
goals
 If students are graded largely on their
abilities to recall, define, recognize, and
follow cook-book steps, you have not
evaluated their progress toward goals
involving higher order thinking skills.
 Don’t assess what is easily measured –
assess what you value.
Mini-sessions on teaching
strategies and assessment
 Chose one or more of the
concurrent and sequential
sessions on teaching strategies
 Go to the coaching sessions for
help in designing
assignments/activities using
particular teaching or assessment
strategy.
Task: your course plan
 Go to page 12.
 Draft a course plan that organizes
the order of content and topics in
the context of the goals and uses
appropriate assessments and
teaching strategies for giving
students goals-related practice as
they encounter content and
concepts.
Task: final posters
 Poster #1
Name, course title, # of
students, course context
• Overarching goals
• Course plan
• Short statement of how the
course plans allows students to
achieve overarching goals
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Task: final posters
 Poster #2
Description of at least one activity
or assignment, with assessment,
using one of the teaching
strategies described in the
workshop, with statement about
how it fits into your course plan
• Statement about what you would
particularly like feedback on
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