Re-Thinking Your Course

1. Re-Thinking Your Course

2. Contact Hours Comparison • Current 2,520 minutes/semester • New MWF 2,475 minutes • New TTh 2,400 minutes

3. Contact Minutes Over Two Weeks • Current 350 minutes • New MWF 330 minutes • New TTh 320 minutes

4. First Message • Get the big rocks in first!! • Steve Ehrman

5. Multiple Approaches • Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins • Understanding by Design • L. Dee Fink • Creating Significant Learning Experiences

6. What Do I Most Care About • Eaves-dropping on a conversation among former students five years from now – • What would you most like to hear them remember from your course?

7. Possible Goals • Foundational, short term • Score 80% or higher on comprehensive final • Foundational, longer term • Master this material so can succeed in next course • Broader, application/integration • Learn how historians evaluate arguments and information • Human dimension/caring • See themselves as appreciating history and seeing its importance

8. Reminder • The point is not to include all or most of the goals. • The key is thinking about what you want to achieve – and making a conscious decision.

9. Assessment and Classroom Activities • Design Assessment First • Create exams aimed at testing whether students learned what you said was most important • Then Create Classroom Activities • Plan activities designed to help students develop so they can meet the assessment tasks (and the learning goals)

10. Before You Teach • Write out test questions • Or • “At the end of this unit, students will be able to…”

11. Benefits • Forces use to operationalize goal statements • Having test questions in mind helps us sort out what to include and what can be left out • Serves as test of whether you are doing what you really care about

12. Ways of Shaping Classroom Time • How/where to deliver information • Do we have to tell them or are there alternatives? • Flipped classroom?

13. What Kind of Information • Depends on Learning Goals • Content • Packaged w/out ambiguity • Lecture or text • Interpretation/analysis • “Messy” – no single conclusion

14. What Will The Students Be Doing? • Active learning • Make relevance explicit • Reflection • What did I learn/what is still unclear • How has my understanding changed • How this information matters in my life

15. Classroom Activities – The Big Message • There is never enough time, so you have to leave some things out • Make sure it is a conscious choice based on your learning goals

16. Structuring Out of Class • Explicit planning • Asking them to do things that meet your goals • Follow with rudimentary flipped classroom • Focus on what they need help understanding • Not delivery of what they have learned from reading

17. Getting them to do the work • Accountability • Not everything has to be graded • Changing our behavior • Don’t be an enabler

18. Teaching Strategy • Techniques v. strategies • Audience, timing and goals • Understand where students are • Find appropriate techniques • Use combinations to create illusion of variety • Use combinations over different days to move from lower level learning to higher

19. Check Your Work • Dee’s Grid

20. If you want more … • More on Dee’s approach, or a chance to talk with others who are trying to re-organize their courses • During summer • Let me know