Transcript Student-focused (“Students will be able to….”)

Rethinking Course Design
A Practical Strategy for Designing
Effective and Innovative Courses
Barbara Tewksbury, Hamilton College
[email protected]
Designing a course
Could start this session by trying
to develop list of topics for your
course
Misses the real point of an
effective course
Focus should be on developing
students’ abilities to solve problems
in the discipline and apply what they
have learned to future tasks.
Not just exposing students to topics.
Setting course goals
What do we want students to be
able to do when they are finished
with the course?
What value have we added to their
future abilities as a result of having
taken the course?
Why build a course around
goals for students?
Teaching is commonly viewed as
being teacher-centered.
Reinforced by the teaching
evaluation process
Commonly reinforced by how we
think of our courses: “I want to
expose my students to….” or “I want
to teach my students about…” or “I
want to show students that…”
Why build a course around
goals for students?
“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
Why build a course around
goals for students?
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).
Setting course goals
Answering the question, “What do I
want my students to be able to do” is
crucial.
A course should give students first
hand experience in what we want
them to be able to do when they are
done with our courses.
If you want students to be good at
something, they must practice;
therefore goals drive both course
design and assessment.
The difference that studentfocused goals make
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
The difference that studentfocused goals make
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.
The difference that studentfocused goals make
Example from an intro geo course
 Survey of geologic processes and hazards
Vs.
 Enabling students to make informed decisions
about where to purchase property and defend
those decisions with evidence
 Analyze the underlying influence on human events
(history, pre-history, international relations, culture)
 Evaluate a local issue with geologic underpinnings
and make a recommendation for community action
 Read a news report about a geologic event, find
additional reliable information, and evaluate the
accuracy of the news report.
Changing the focus
 What sorts of things do you do simply
because you are a professional in your
discipline??
I use the geologic record to reconstruct the
past and 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….
What do you do??
Physicist: predict outcomes based
on calculations from physics
principles
Art historian: assess works of art
Historian: interpret historical account
in light of the source of information
English prof: critical reading of
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.
Start by answering the question
What do you do in your discipline?
Alternatively, what is unique about your
world view/the view of your discipline?
Establishing goals
for your students
More than having students gain a
strong background
We’ll answer the question what do I
want my students to be able to do??
Students will use their strong background
in order to ____
rather than just
Students will have a strong background in
____
Goals involving lower
order thinking skills
Knowledge, comprehension, application
list
explain
calculate
identify
describe
mix
recognize
paraphrase
prepare
Examples of goals involving
lower order thinking skills
 At the end of this course, students will be
able to:
List the major features of the different types of
plate boundaries
Identify common rocks and minerals
Recognize examples of erosional and
depositional glacial landforms on a topo map
Cite examples of poor land use practice
Explain the difference between raster and
vector data sets
Calculate standard deviation for a set of data
Examples of goals involving
lower order thinking skills
At the end of this course, students will be
able to:
Compare and contrast the carbon cycle and
the hydrologic cycle
Discuss the influence of temperature and
pressure on rock rheology
Describe how seismic waves provide
information about the Earth’s interior, and
give an illustrative example
Explain how LiDAR can be used to detect
prior incidents of mass movement and give
examples
Examples of goals involving
lower order thinking skills
While some of these goals
involve a deeper level of
knowledge and understanding
than others, they largely
require students to reiterate.
Goals involving higher
order thinking skills
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, students will be
able to:
 Analyze an unfamiliar natural disaster (which is
different from recalling those covered in class)
 Evaluate the geological context of an unfamiliar
event.
 Use data from recent Mars missions to re-evaluate
pre-Curiosity hypotheses about Mars geologic
processes and history/evolution
 Interpret subsurface structure from map and field
data.
 Frame a hypothesis and formulate a research plan.
Examples of goals involving
higher order thinking skills
At the end of this course, students will 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 ____
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 – important for the
future
Why are goals important?
If you want students to be good at
something, they must practice
Goals should therefore drive both
course design and assessment.
What kind of goals to establish?
Higher order or lower order
thinking skills?
Measurable or not?
Abstract or concrete goals?
We’ll choose goals involving
higher order thinking skills
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 learning outcomes
involving lower order thinking skills
We’ll choose concrete goals
with measurable outcomes
 Clearer path to designing a course when 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.
 Students will able to interpret unfamiliar tectonic
settings based on information on physiography,
volcanic activity, and seismicity.
Vs.
 Students will understand plate tectonics.
Or (worse)
 Students will learn about plate tectonics.
Or
 Students will develop a strong background in….
We’ll set concrete goals
rather than abstract 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.
Do these goals meet our criteria?
(student-focused, higher order, measurable, concrete not abstract)
 The course will show students that geology is relevant
to everyone’s lives.
 Students will develop a strong background in…
 Students will know about Earth systems.
 Students will learn that statistics can be manipulated
and misleading.
 Students will understand that global warming is a
complex issue.
 Students will think like structural geologists.
 Students will design age-appropriate lesson plans
consistent with research in cognitive development &
geoscience education best practice.
Your task: write at least 1 goal
for the students in a course
The goals are the underpinning of
your course and serve as the basis
for developing activities.
1-3 primary goals is ideal - if you
have 5, 10, or more, you’re at the
task level, not the course level.
There is no one right set of primary
goals for a particular course.
Heed the guidelines!
Student-focused (“Students will be able
to….”)
Higher order (use verbs such as interpret,
solve, predict, analyze, synthesize,
construct, design, evaluate, formulate)
Concrete (avoid “appreciate”)
Measurable (avoid “understand”)
Focus on preparing them for the future,
not just for the final exam
Designing a course around goals
Not fair or effective to teach them
about related topics during the
semester and then ask them to pull it
all together at the end
Students need practice to build their
abilities relative to the goal, not just
their knowledge base
What students practice must match
what we would like them to be good at
What do students need practice in?
Example: students will be able to evaluate the
geologic hazards in a region, make an informed
judgment about land use, and incorporate what
they have learned in other courses into that
judgment.
Finding, evaluating, and teaching themselves new
information
Applying what they know to make informed
judgments
Reflecting on how their thinking/learning has
changed
Articulating future plans/intentions
Last two – can’t just hope that students notice…..
Brainstorming
What kind of practice could you
thread throughout the course (not
just one sidecar module or single
culminating project) that helps
students make progress toward
the goal?
What could you integrate that will
help students evaluate progress
in their abilities toward the goal?
19 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/NAGTWorksh
ops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html