Designing Effective and Innovative Courses

1. Designing Effective and Innovative Courses Audio access: Call in 1-800-704-9804 Access code: 78331341 Please mute your phone by pressing *6 Alternate number: 1-404-920-6604 (not toll-free) Technical problems? Contact Monica at mbruckne@carleton.edu Program begins at 11 am, Thurs. June 3 You can find the workshop program at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign2010/program.html

2. Preview of the day • 11-11:30 General discussion • 11:30-12:30 Session on assessing student learning • 12:30-1:00 Break, opt. discussion • Discussions on designing activities • 1-1:45 either jigsaw/gallery walk or how to make large classes more engaging and interactive • 1:45-2:30 either concept sketches or writing assignments • 2:30-3:00 End-of-day discussion

3. Assessment of student learning • You are already doing a variety of assessments: • CPS (classroom performance system) or other synchronous systems • Holding up cards of different colors to agree with multiple choice answers • Think, pair, share, report-out or, giving quizzes and exams, or assigning lab reports

4. Formative assessments • CPS, holding up colored index cards, TPS report-outs….. • are all examples of “informal assessments”….low risk, no grade assigned, but provide you with feedback about how students self-evaluate their degree of understanding. We often term these “formative assessments” because students are still developing their understanding.

5. Summative assessments • Quizzes, exams, and lab write-ups are examples of “formal assessments,” or those which have performance evaluation, or a grade attached. The instructor evaluates a student’s level of understanding of the material. • These are also examples of “summative assessments,” a term which describes a measure of student learning at the end of an assignment, or class.

6. Class time is a precious resource • What are some of the advantages/disadvantages of doing formative assessment throughout a course? • What are some issues that might arise when you increase and diversify assessment mechanisms?

7. The stakes (and student stress levels) go up for formal assessment • Use grading rubrics to improve student understanding of what they will be evaluated on. • Rubrics are a test for the instructor as to the degree of alignment with the goals of specific assignments

8. The value of developing grading rubrics What is a “grading rubric”? -- guidelines for evaluation of a student’s work. They also provide standards for students to achieve in order to obtain specific scores or grades on particular assignments or the course as a whole. -- rubrics shift the responsibility for grades onto the student to demonstrate knowledge, not the instructor to identify mistakes

9. What features do all rubrics share? • Simple • Subjective and objective • Clear • Can evaluate both content and skill

10. A sample grading rubric • Each lab has content (left column), and skill components (right column), which often includes writing

11. Rubrics can represent “authentic assessment” • “Authentic assessment” refers to alignment of the evaluation and the goal of the activity being assessed

12. Clarify how you will use rubrics • In the UVM lab example, a student is asked to demonstrate “a complete and detailed understanding” of a concept. They need to understand what this means….

13. Clarify how you will use rubrics • “In this case a complete understanding can be demonstrated by synthesizing many pieces of evidence (attitude of rocks, ripple marks, grain size, bed thickness, evidence of past life, evidence of exposure to air, rock color, and cracks and fractures) into a model that could explain which environment on the earth’s surface could form these rocks.”

14. Clarify how you will use rubrics • “A detailed understanding can be demonstrated by communicating an understanding of how each piece of evidence is interpreted.” • So, in order for a student to receive full credit they would need to explain how each piece of evidence is interpreted, and then synthesize all of the lines of evidence into a coherent explanation.

15. How does the rubric translate to a grade? • The burden is on the student to demonstrate and communicate what they know From the lab manual introduction: • “We will read your lab looking to make sure that you communicate an understanding of all the individual pieces of evidence the lab presents AND you communicate a depositional environment interpretation that pulls all this evidence together.”

16. How does the rubric translate to a grade? • “We will not be giving (or subtracting) points for each question in the lab and adding up these points to give you a numerical score. We will be reading your lab and making a judgment on the attention to detail and level of understanding you have communicated through the lab as a whole.”

17. Another rubric example

18. A rubric for writing

19. Take away points: • Formative assessment: low risk, provides student and instructor with feedback • Summative assessment: associated with grading, needs to be in alignment with the learning goals for the activity, rubrics provide guidelines and criteria, and are shared with the student in advance of submission; rubrics can shift responsibility on the student to demonstrate what they know.

20. Your assignment: • Think of assignments you have given or will give (your developing list) and design the grading rubric for it ORdesign a rubric for an existing assignment OR a generic assignment, for example… ….a GIS lab …..a rock identification lab

21. Resources for assessment: • “SALG” - student assessment of learning goals: http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/salgains/instructor/ Faculty post assessment vehicles they have developed for their courses. There may be one posted for a course that you are teaching • http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/assess/index.html Tutorial on assessment, assessment tools, links to references on student learning

22. Work on assignment/activity • Options: work on your own or join a working group. • Leave Elluminate up; hang up and dial in again using the regular call-in 1-800-704-9804 and new access code • 1:00-1:45 • Jigsaw and gallery walk (Barb): access code 22235699 • Challenges in large lectures (Char): access code 55442755 • 1:45-2:00 • Concept sketches (Barb): access code 65846187 • Writing assignments (Char): access code 24386965 • The 1:00 groups can continue on after Barb and Char go to the other groups at 1:45. • Use the discussion board or Elluminate chat for other discussions and questions. • Call 1-800-704-9804 at 2:30, using access code 78331341.

23. Homework for Friday • Prepare your two electronic posters using your workspace pages. The two posters are: • Final course poster • Assignment/activity poster • Be sure that you have made the final updates by 11 am EDT on Friday! • Please fill out the final road check before 3:30 today.