Roanoke College INQ 300 Development Workshop August 15-16, 2012

1. Designing Effective and Innovative Courses A Practical Strategy Roanoke College INQ 300 Development Workshop August 15-16, 2012 Adapted from a model developed for The Cutting Edge by Barbara J. Tewksbury Hamilton College http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html

2. Applying the Science of Learning (Halpern and Hakel) Goal: Teaching for long term retention and transfer • Provide repeated, spaced practice at retrieval • Vary conditions under which learning happens • Have students re-present information in new format • Assess students’ prior knowledge and experience • Confront students’ belief that learning should be easy • Give systematic and corrective feedback • Use lectures for recognition but not understanding • Expect “selective forgetting” of info not reinforced • Recognize depth/breadth tradeoff • Focus on what students do, not what professors do

3. Aim of this workshop Introduce a practical strategy for designing an INQ 300 course that: • gets students to think for themselves in the context of a contemporary issue • stresses inquiry and de-emphasizes traditional direct instruction • emphasizes relevance, transferability, and future use • builds in authentic assessment • passes muster with our Curriculum Committee!

4. How are courses commonly 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

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

6. An alternative approach Emphasis on designing a course in which: • Students learn significant and appropriate content and skills • But students also have practice in thinking for themselves and solving problems • Students leave the course prepared to use their knowledge and skills in the future

7. Over 30 years of research documents collaborative learning’s positive effect on … • content mastery • critical thinking ability • problem solving ability • development of interpersonal skills (highly valued by employers) Barkley, E.F., Cross, K.P., Major, C.H. (2005). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T., & Smith, K.A. (1991). Cooperative learning: Increasing college faculty instructional productivity. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports, No. 4. Washington, DC: GW University.

8. An aside on terminology • Design model is focused on learning outcomes • Learning outcomes should be • concrete and • measurable (“My goal in life is to make a million $$”; “My goal next year is to win on Jeopardy!”).

9. Overview of this approach • Articulating context and audience • Setting learning outcomes • Overarching learning outcomes • Skills learning outcomes • Achieving desired outcomes through selecting content • Developing a course plan with assignments, activities, and assessments to achieve the desired outcomes

10. Step I: Context and audience Our course design process begins with answering the following: • Who are my students? • What do they need? • What are the needs of the curriculum? • What are the constraints and support structure?

11. The Students in INQ 300 • Mostly seniors, a few juniors • 20% transfers, 80% entered as freshman • Most around 21 years old • Any major • Completed INQ Core • INQ 110 and INQ 120 • 200-level Perspectives courses • 90% took INQ 240 Statistics

12. The Intellectual Inquiry Curriculum • Critical inquiry into important questions • Methods of and questions asked by • Social Sciences • Natural Sciences • Mathematics • Humanities

13. The Intellectual Inquiry Curriculum Skills—all revisited in INQ 300 • Writing • Oral communication • Quantitative reasoning • Research/Information literacy • Collaboration

14. INQ 300 requires students to • work in small groups to • research and • draw on information and perspectives from all three divisions to • develop a proposal concerning a concept, approach, or solution to a contemporary problem that will be • presented in a formal oral defense.

15. INQ instructors should Pose a question or topic in such a way that • students can draw on information and perspectives from all three divisions, • encourages research and creative application of facts to a contemporary problem so as to • students arrive at, propose, and defend a solution. • allows students to draw from their previous work

16. INQ 300 Course Requirements • Include a number of intellectually rigorous readings, along with any other types of source materials relevant to the instructors’ disciplines. • Ask students to complete four kinds of tasks. The particular way these tasks are completed is up to the instructor: • Application of previous work to the course topic • Individual Writing • Group Assignment (may incorporate individual work) • Oral defense of group assignment.

17. Course Structure In order to make time for the required group project, faculty may wish to • Meet in a seminar style for the first portion of the course • Meet as a class only occasionally in later portions of the course • Spend significant time meeting with small groups to monitor progress

18. Assessment Needs • Individual paper scored on INQ Rubric • Oral presentation (individual or group) scored on INQ Rubric • Administer QR Test (multiple choice) • Collect final projects electronically. • Archive • Rubric-scored by faculty other than instructor • Also scored by instructor??? Rubric under development

19. Task #1: Context, Constraints, and Opportunities • What are the primary challenges posed by the context and constraints? • What opportunities are presented by the context and constraints that you could take advantage of in course design?

20. Step 2: Setting student-focusedoverarching & skill learning outcomes • 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 focus on what the students do, not the teacher

21. Setting student-focused, overarching learning outcomes • Example from an art history course • Give students a survey of art from a particular period Vs. • Enable 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

22. Setting student-focused, overarching learning outcomes • Example from a bio course • Provide an overview of topics in general biology Vs. • Enable 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.

23. Common denominator • What sorts of things do you do simply because you are a professional in your discipline? For example, a geologist might • use the geologic record to reconstruct the past and to predict the future. • look at houses on floodplains, and wonder how people could be so stupid • hear the latest news from Mars and say, well that must mean that….

24. Verbs for learning outcomes involving lower order thinking skills • Knowledge, comprehension, application calculate mix prepare list identify recognize explain describe paraphrase

25. Examples of learning outcomes 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. • Describe how the Doppler shift provides information about moving objects, and give an illustrative example. • Cite examples of poor land use practice. • Discuss the major ways that AIDS is transmitted. • Calculate standard deviation for a set of data.

26. Examples of learning outcomes involving lower order thinking skills While some of these learning outcomes involve a deeper level of knowledge and understanding than others, the goals are largely reiterative.

27. Verbs for learning outcomes involving higher order thinking skills • Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, some types of application derive design formulate predict interpret evaluate analyze synthesize create

28. Examples of learning outcomes 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 not covered in class involving . . . • Collect and analyze data in order to . . . • Design models of . . . • Solve unfamiliar problems in . . . • Find and evaluate information/data on . . . • Predict the outcome of . . .

29. Examples of learning outcomes involving higher order thinking skills • What makes these different from the previous set is that they are analytical, rather than reiterative. • Focus is on new and different situations. • Emphasis is on integrating skills, abilities, knowledge, and understanding.

30. Why are overarching outcomes important? If you want students to be good at something, they must practice; therefore, learning outcomes drive both course design and assessment.

31. Learning outcomes should be… • Student-centered • Focused on higher order thinking skills • Concrete • Comprised of measurable outcomes

32. Setting skill learning outcomes • Example skills • Accessing and reading the professional literature • Working in teams • Writing, quantitative skills, oral presentation • Critically assessing information on the web • These may be elements of overarching outcomes or may be their own outcomes

33. Common Learning Outcomes for INQ 300 • Students will apply their research findings to a formal project addressing the course topic question and will successfully present this proposal in an oral defense. • Students will write well-organized and clearly reasoned papers both individually and with a group. Papers will have clear theses, effective organization, and a minimum of sentence-level errors.

34. Common Learning Outcomes for INQ 300 • Students will contribute to meaningful, effective discussion and collaborative work that includes expressing, listening to, and debating ideas. • Students will be able to apply critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills in a meaningful way.

35. Common Learning Outcomes for INQ 300 • Students will make explicit, meaningful connections between past course work (both in the core and in their majors) and contemporary issues. • Students will demonstrate understanding of a contemporary issue or problem, an awareness of the types of inquiry needed to understand it, and the resources required for addressing it.

36. Step 3: Achieving outcomes through selecting content topics / issues / problems • What general content topics could you use to achieve the overarching learning outcomes of your INQ 300 course? • Recall the constraints & opportunities

37. INQ 300 Content Topics • Contemporary issue or problem • Amenable to group project format • Enable students to revisit previous courses • INQ (draw from all three divisions) • Major • Encourage research • Encourage creative approaches • Encourage meaningful critical thinking

38. What about the problem … • Should the problem arise from a contemporary issue? • Should everyone in the class work on the same problem? Should different groups have different problems? • Should the students propose the problem or be given the problem? • How focused should the problem be? • Does there need to be a concrete, workable solution to the problem?

39. Task #2: Begin to develop a course framework • Pick a theme or topic for your INQ 300 course. • Write an overarching content learning outcome for your course (heed four criteria for good goals). • Brainstorm problems that fit within this theme.

40. On the large Post-It: • Your name • Any other important info on context, challenges, and opportunities • Theme or topic or title • One overarching content learning outcome • Additional skill outcomes, if desired • Possible problems for students to address

41. Learning outcomes should be… • Student-centered • Focused on higher order thinking skills • Concrete • Comprised of measurable outcomes