Derived from a model developed by Barbara J. Tewksbury Department of Geosciences Hamilton College

1. Designing Effective and Innovative Courses A Practical Strategy Applied to the QST 110 Pilot Courses Derived from a model developed by Barbara J. Tewksbury Department of Geosciences Hamilton College btewksbu@hamilton.edu http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html

2. Aim of this workshop • Introduce a practical strategy for QST 110 courses that • gets students to think for themselves in the context of first-year writing • stresses inquiry and de-emphasizes traditional direct instruction • emphasizes relevance, transferability of writing skills and writing to learn, and future use • builds in authentic assessment

3. How are coursescommonly 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

4. Paul’s Victorian Literature Course • Include Tennyson, E. Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Dickens, one of the Brontes, random poetry, and Oscar Wilde • Organize syllabus by author • Midterm, Research Paper, and Final Exam

5. Tewksbury: What’s missing: • Consideration of what your students need or could use, particularly after the course is over • Articulation of goals beyond content/coverage goals • Focus on student learning and problem solving rather than on coverage of material by the instructor

6. An alternativegoals-based approach • Emphasis on designing a course in which: • 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

7. An alternativegoals-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

8. Does it work? • An effective design template • 9 years of course design workshops; now part of NSF-funded On the Cutting Edge program (http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops) • Available as an online tutorial • http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html

9. Overview • Articulating context and audience • Setting goals • Setting overarching content goals • Achieving goals through creating assignments • Developing a course plan with activities and assignments to achieve the goals

10. Overview • Just a reminder of the dual role of our present development for the pilot program: • Prepare for our fall courses • “Test-drive” the faculty development process for next year, seeing what does and doesn’t work. For our purposes at this point, we will focus on your CONTENT goals.

11. Step 1: context & constraints • What are the primary challenges posed by the context and constraints of QST 110? • What opportunities are presented by the context and constraints that you could take advantage of in course design?

12. Step 2: Setting student-focused, overarching goals We will set goals that: A) Are student focused B) Require higher order thinking skills C) Have measurable outcomes D) Are concrete rather than vague and abstract.

13. Step 2A: Setting student-focused, 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 about…” or “I want to show students that…”

14. Step 2A: Setting student-focused overarching goals • We can’t do a student’s learning for him/her • Exposure does not guarantee learning • Students learn when they are actively engaged in practice, application, and problem-solving (NRC How People Learn).

15. 2A: Setting student-focused, overarching goals • 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 set course goals for the students, not the teacher

16. 2A: Setting student-focused, overarching goals • Example from an art history course • 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

17. 2A: Setting student-focused, overarching goals • Example from a bio course • Survey of topics in general biology Vs. • Enabling 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.

18. 2A: Setting overarching goals for your course • Ask the question: “What do I want my students to be able to do?” • I want my students to have a strong background in ____ OR • I want my students to use their strong background in order to do ____

19. 2B: Higher- vs. Lower-order Thinking Skills • Lower order thinking skills generally involve knowledge, comprehension, application: list identify recognize explain describe paraphrase calculate mix prepare

20. 2B: Examples of goals 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 • Recognize examples of erosional and depositional glacial landforms on a topographic map • Cite examples of poor land use practice. • Discuss the major ways that AIDS is transmitted. • Calculate standard deviation for a set of data

21. 2B: Goals involving higherorder thinking skills • Higher-order skills often involve analysis, synthesis, evaluation, some types of application: derive design formulate predict interpret evaluate analyze synthesize create

22. 2B: Examples of goals 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, other than those covered in class, involving hydrogeologic issues. • Collect and analyze data in order to ___ • Design models of ___ • Solve unfamiliar problems in ____ • Find and evaluate information/data on ____ • Predict the outcome of ____

23. 2B: Examples of goals involving higher-order thinking skills: • What makes these goals different from the previous set is that they are analytical, rather than reiterative. • Focus is on new and different situations. • Emphasis is on transitive nature of skills, abilities, knowledge, and understanding

24. Overarching goals involving lower order thinking skills are embedded in ones involving higher order thinking skills • Therefore, we’ll set goals with higher order thinking skills. • This has the added benefit of causing course designs where repeated practice becomes a natural part of achieving higher goals.

25. 2C: Setting concrete goals withmeasurable outcomes: • Clearer path to designing a course when overarching goals are stated as specific, observable actions that students should be able to perform if they have mastered the content and skills of a course. • I want students to be able to interpret unfamiliar tectonic settings based on information on physiography, volcanic activity, and seismicity. Vs. • I want students to understand plate tectonics.

26. 2D: Setting concrete rather than abstract goals • Abstract goals are laudable but difficult to assess directly and difficult to translate into practical course design • I want students to appreciate the complexity of Earth systems. • I want students to think like scientists.

27. Trial run: evaluating goals Goals should: a) be student focused b) require higher order thinking skills c) have measurable outcomes d) be concrete rather than vague

28. Do these goals meet our criteria? • I want to expose my students to the history of economic thought. • I want my students to understand that poverty is a complex issue. • I want my students to be able to identify rocks and minerals. • Students will be able to apply their knowledge of statistics to analyze reports and claims in the popular press. For goals that don’t measure up, how would you improve them?

29. Paul’s Victorian Literature Course (New) Goals:

30. Task #1: write overarching goals focusing on your course content • The overarching goals are the underpinning of your course and serve as the basis for developing activities to meet those goals. • 3-4 overarching goals is ideal. • There is no one right set of overarching goals for a particular course topic. • Heed our four criteria for good goals

31. On Poster Paper: • Your name • Course topic • First draft of content goals

32. Step 3: Achieving goals through creating writing assignments • What writing assignments could you design to determine whether or not students meet the content goals (and our other common outcomes)? (Remember: goals need to have measurable outcomes!)

33. General Concepts • Revisit topics/skills with increasing complexity in each course chunk • Enable students to have repeated practice toward goals with increasing independence • Embed lower order tasks in higher order tasks • Broader content topics allow embedding of concepts/content that would have been covered in a standard survey course • Topic coverage doesn’t have to be linear

34. Case Study: Paul’s “The Social Functions of Art” GST 101 GOALS: • Analyze art in order to understand your own responses to a particular piece • apply abstract concepts about art to particular works • analyze the role art plays in contemporary life

35. GOALS:interpret your own responses to art; apply abstract concepts about art to particular works;analyze the role art plays in contemporary life Old Paper Assignments: • Analyze representational piece, pre-1850 • Analyze abstract piece, post-1850 • Research paper: What should art do?

36. GOALS:interpret your own responses to art; apply abstract concepts about art to particular works;analyze the role art plays in contemporary life New Paper Assignments: • How would/can you use this piece of art? • What’s the best justification for abstract art? • Research paper: What should art do?

37. Paul’s Victorian Literature Course (Old) • Include Tennyson, E. Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Dickens, one of the Brontes, random poetry, and Oscar Wilde • Organize syllabus by author • Midterm, Research Paper, and Final Exam

38. Paul’s Victorian Literature Course (New) Structure:

39. Task #2: choose content topics to achieve overarching goals • Consider your overarching goal(s). • Take a first-stab at series of units on your second sheet of poster paper.

40. Remember our General Concepts: • Revisit topics/skills with increasing complexity in each course chunk • Enable students to have repeated practice toward goals with increasing independence • Embed lower order tasks in higher order tasks • Broader content topics allow embedding of concepts/content that would have been covered in a standard survey course • Topic coverage doesn’t have to be linear

41. Now Let’s Shake Things Up Even More! • Where and when do teaching and learning typically occur for your course? • In the classroom? • Outside of class? • When do students most need your help in processing course content? • During their first exposure to new content? • When they’re learning to apply new content? Are you making the best use of the time available for teaching and learning? --Walvoord 1998

42. An Assignment-Based Model • Asks students to be responsible for their first-exposure learning outside of class • Moves processing part—analyzing and synthesizing material, using it to solve problems, etc.—to classroom where teacher can help with and monitor student learning • Changes both teacher’s and students’ use of time from traditional model

43. Use of Time in Lecture-Based vs. Interactive Teaching Lecture-based Interactive Class time Process—applies, analyzes, argues, solves problems using first-exposure material Student study time First exposure to new material Class time First exposure to new material—facts, ideas, processes Student study time Process new material

44. What Else Is Changed by Interactive Teaching? • Focus and nature of classroom work • Active learning strategies in which students are thinking, verbalizing, rehearsing, taking risks, receiving feedback! (More later.) • Higher-level expectations of students • Major assignments as the backbone of the course

45. Transition into Tasks 3 and 4 Developing a course plan: • Merge goals and content to plan assignments and activities that • Move students toward mastery of content and skills • Provide them with relevant practice in goals-related tasks • Need assignments that will • Encourage student learning • Provide opportunities for formative feedback • Provide grades and assessment

46. Step 3: Turning Units into Assignments • Remember: “What professors do in their classes matters far less than what they ask students to do.” --Halpern & Haskel 2003 • Think of assignments as assessments that also integrate student learning • What will you have students DO in order to • Learn the course content & • Practice the goals?

47. Step 3: Turning Units into Assignments 1)To help you create appropriate assessments/assignments, ask yourself: “When the course is over, in what kind of situation do I expect students to need, or be able to use, this knowledge?” “What assignments will elicit the kinds of learning I want to measure?” 2) Use your answers to create a question or problem that replicates a real-life context: • You’re on a hospital board and there’s a debate about . . . • A friend comes to you asking for advice about a relationship . . . • Your mother is considering joining a religious group and what’s to know if you think it’s a cult . . .

48. Step 3: Turning Units into Assignments • Ask questions that are relatively open-ended and not necessarily right/wrong; • Consider providing some assumptions or constraints: • The market is/is not efficient in strong-form, random-walk terms. • Create a dialogue between Vygotsky and Piaget, discussing your development as a writer. Explain which one you think is right, and why. • Read Borsch’s “5 rationales for abstract art,” choose the one you most agree with, and defend it.

49. Step 3: Turning Units into Assignments And remember our other criteria: Low-vs. higher-order thinking? Student focused? Measurable outcomes? Concrete? • World Geography Draft 1: Students answer questions about differences in population and resources of countries in that region. • World Geography Draft 2: Students imagine they work for a company that is expanding into that region—students need to give advice on which country has necessary political stability, purchasing power, etc. • --Fink 2005

50. Task #3: create writing assignments • Use Poster Paper to briefly describe 3-4 major assignments (in order!). • Remember: • Create a question or problem that replicates a real-life context; • Ask questions that are relatively open-ended and not necessarily right/wrong; • Consider providing some assumptions or constraints. Stuck? Re-visit old assignments from this or related courses, and think about ways to reframe.