Rethinking Course Design Barbara Tewksbury, Hamilton College A Practical Strategy for Designing Effective and Innovative Courses

 Could start this session by trying to develop list of topics for your course  Misses the real point of an effective course  Focus should not be on exposing students to topics.  Focus should be on developing students’ abilities to solve problems in the discipline and apply what they have learned to future tasks. Designing a course

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

 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). Why build a course around goals for students?

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 student- focused 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 student- focused 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 student- focused 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 or analyze the underlying influence on human events (history, pre-history, international relations, culture) or evaluate a local issue with geologic underpinnings and make an informed decision for community action or 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 explain describe paraphrase list identify recognize calculate mix 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

 While some of these goals involve a deeper level of knowledge and understanding than others, they largely require students to reiterate. Examples of goals involving lower order thinking skills

Goals involving higher order thinking skills  Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, some types of application predict interpret evaluate derive design formulate analyze synthesize 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 form recalling those covered in class)  Evaluate the geological context of an unfamiliar event.  Use data from recent Mars missions to re- evaluate pre-2004 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 scientists.  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?

 17 years of course design workshops; now part of NSF-funded On the Cutting Edge program ( )  Available as an online tutorial  ops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html ops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html