Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• *Course Planning
• *Planning Process
• *Key Questions to Consider When Designing Courses
• Are you thinking of revising your courses by next year
• Curriculum Development Process
• *Depth vs. Breadth
• *Preparing course syllabi
• *Planning written assignments
• Content Coverage
• Consistency in Expectations
• Rethinking How Objectives are Met
• Making sure your students get the big picture from your class
• *Planning Courses to help students become intentional, responsible and enabled learners
• *Are your students realizing that learning in your subject should not end when the course
does
• Setting expectations and welcoming your students
• *Plan and Teach to Foster success in your students
• Plan what kind of time schedule make the most sense for your courses now
• *Planning courses to help student become intentional, responsible and enable learners
• Helping students to succeed with changes you are making to your courses
• *Helping students to understand your syllabi or how you are teaching
• Planning for the functions of content coverage in your courses
• Setting the right tone for your class, getting to know your students
• *Still time to revise your syllabi
• Thinking about trying some thing different next semester?
• Looking at your policies
• Textbook selection
• Consistency of standards across instructors or courses
• *Helping students to feel like they have some control might raise course evaluations
• Insuring students get the big objectives for the course
• *Allowing students a little say over deadlines and getting them to get in the habit of using
the Blackboard/Listserv for your course
• *Time to refresh your course
• Spend time thinking about the courses you are teaching now
• Excellent, free web-based instructional materials available for the sciences and health
sciences
• *Helping our students to become self-directed learners
• *Planning for new courses or revising courses on the basis of program learning outcomes
• *Helping students to get the essential long-lasting lessons from your course
• *Getting students to read and have ownership over the syllabus
• *Helping to balance the power in your classes
• Getting mid-course feedback on your class
• Does the amount of content taught influence how well students understand the material
• How to plan time allotment for a course
• Being supportive of our students in their differences in the time they need to master skills
• Using a bingo card concept to increase student interaction with the content and decrease
procrastination
• *Maximizing student learning
• Reviewing how the courses went as you finish the semester
• Developing prerequisite courses that meet the expectations of the instructors of advanced
courses
• Making sense of students' complaints that the instructor or the course was unfair
• Getting meaningful feedback from your students that is separate from course evaluations
• Planning your course to help students acquire the thinking skills of the discipline
• Alignment of Skill Requirement. ppt
• Beginning to do scholarship on your teaching
• Making your course more aligned and more explicit to your students
• Teaching models to revise as you plan for next time you teach
• Essential aspects of course planning
• Making the implied more visible and constant in your syllabus and first day of class
• Getting students to understand the relationships among concepts
• Getting course-specific evaluation information from your students
• On the first day of class help your students to see the overall consistency in your course
•
Planning Process
When you get to planning for your teaching use this planning process:
• First consider your learning goals for the course. What do you want your students to
achieve at the end of the course?
• Next plan how you will assess your students and give them feedback. Assessment should
be consistent with the goals of the course.
• Finally plan your teaching and learning activities to help the students reach these
objectives.
It may sound backwards, but it is more consistent and leads to a better course.
Department vs. Breadth
As you plan your courses, think of the curriculum to be learned as a rectangle,
with the horizontal sides = breadth and the vertical sides = depth. In this image
the area of the rectangle basically remains constant regardless of how you
construct the rectangle. Which do you need for your course, greater breadth or
greater depth? You cannot have it both ways. Mathematically inclined folks will
remind us that the maximum area of a rectangle with the smallest parameter is a
square. Perhaps you also need to make your curriculum more of a square than a
very narrow, but long rectangle. (Adapted from John Biggs- Teaching for Quality
Learning at University, What the student does), SHRE and Open Press, 1999
Take time to plan and develop detailed course syllabi, it will save you time later.
Content Coverage
As you plan your courses, ask yourself the following questions about content
coverage:
15. How much content are you expecting the students to learn? Is this
reasonable?
16. Is the content covered in a context that will help the students to learn the
material?
17. Am I assuming that content coverage (by the instructor in a lecture or in
the readings)= student learning, mastery?
18. What can the faculty member do to promote students learning the
material?
It is better to thoroughly learn less material, than to superficially learn, but not
understand more material.
If you find that you are not concentrating on these answers, what can you let go of
to help achieve what you really want to achieve?
As you review, revise and plan your courses for next semester ask yourself how
well or how much are you fostering these skills in our students. This thought
process may allow you to incorporate these desirable outcome indicators without
making huge changes to your course structure.
4. Are you showing how interesting the subject is and how much you still
enjoy learning about it?
5. Have you made it clear that you will still be accessible to the students as
they continue to learn?
6. you fostered intellectual curiosity in this subject matter?
7. Have you helped students to develop these learning to learn skills in this
discipline:
ability to ask good questions in this discipline
knowledge of print, electronic, human resources that are available
to them
ability to evaluate the appropriateness of these resources for their
continued learning
ability to read the primary or secondary literature on this topic
If we can get our students to achieve this lifelong learning in a subject, we and
they will have succeeded.
Thanks to Lois Peck and Diane Morel for making these student success goals so
clear.
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11. To meet the goal of an intention learner, we need to help our students to
become integrative thinkers and see connections among disciplines, reflect
on their acquired knowledge and their learning to learn skills.
12. Since responsibility to act as informed citizens is based on values,
principles and commitments, we need to help students acquire these values
and principles. Responsible citizens are active participants in their society
and can see consequences of their own and others' actions and decision.
13. Enable learners can use their knowledge and skills to communicate their
ideas, solve complex problems and manage practical situations.
As you review, revise and plan your courses for next semester ask yourself how
well or how much are you fostering these skills in our students. This thought
process may allow you to incorporate these desirable outcome indicators without
making huge changes to your course structure.
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Textbook selection
When you are considering textbooks to use in connection with your courses, first
consider what and how the content is taught. If you find several textbooks that are
consistent with what you plan to teach, then look at the additional instructional materials
that you and the students can us that go along with this textbook. Publishers of large
sellers are developing excellent electronic cartridges that have many presentation
software for the figures in the book, self-instructional materials, self-assessments, web
links, 3rd demonstrations, etc. Some of these cartridges can also get you started with
Blackboard very easily.
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Students might not resent the deadlines or dates as much if they helped to select them.
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Asking for feedback and the possibility of making minor changes (based on the voice of
the majority) to the schedule helps students to feel part of the decision making in the class
and may cut down on complaints or excuses later. Make sure you tell them it is majority
rule with your ability to overrule them.
Giving students a very early assignments (and one they might want to do) on Blackboard
or other electronic discussion format you will be using insures that they know how to
access it, sign in and might get them in the habit of using this non-class discussion venue
frequently. If you find the technology is not working you will know about very early in
the course.
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Does your textbook now offer a course pack that has many worthwhile self-instructional
and self-assessment activities? You might want to include some of them in your course
requirement.
Look at what your students really need to know to succeed in more advanced courses or
careers that follow from this course and make sure it is emphasized.
What learning activities would help students to master the difficult concepts and skills of
the course.
Remember you can not continue to add without taking out or reducing emphasis.
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Write your reflections on how to improve or change the course now and put these notes
along with the folder and computer files you keep for this courses.
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Learn how to restrict the content we expect our students to learn and provide the
scaffolding to allow for further learning
Help our students keep on learning the subject after the course is over.
The is the only real chance we have to go beyond the basics with the students.
Have to find ways to make this subject interesting and inspiring so they will want
to keep on learning
Thanks to Dee and Arletta Fink for helping with this tip.
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Faculty can share power with students to determine how individual classes are conducted,
how material is learned (not what material) is learned).
What opinions are expressed, etc. Yet we cannot give up power as to how an entire course
is run.
Faculty power comes from the authority our university has given us as the instructor.
We can share power but we can never share authority.
The idea of the distinction between power and authority comes from D. Fink's book,
Teaching with your mouth shut, 2000 Heinemann Publishers.
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Chris Knapper of the UK and now in Canada introduced me to the concept of learning
time.
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This tip come from Margie Roos in PT and was mentioned at the last TableTalk on being
supportive of our students. Many other good ideas also come out, so attend the next
discussion on Tuesday, January 18th.
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• you might ask the students to create a 20 item crossword puzzle, with the answer
provided, on the terms used in a chapter
• ask five intelligent questions pertaining to the class material during a class
• have > 95% class attendance
• find a website that is accurate about a concept discussed in the textbook etc.
Distribute the bingo card at the beginning of the semester and let the students know that this is an
optional assignment.
When a student shows proof that (s) he completes the activity the instructor marks the box.
Prizes are given when people complete a line or several lines. Prizes can be to drop the lowest
quiz grade, can bring a study sheet with information to the final exam or adding 5 points to the
final exam score. The irony is that students who get the most lines probably will not need the
prizes because the extra work they did helped them to master the material. However, the
motivation to earn the prize may have helped them to engage in the content more and to decrease
their procrastination.
This tip was adapted from Amy Jo Sutterluety, Bingo Games Decreases Procrastination, Increase
Interaction with Content. The Teaching Professor, Nov. 2002: 16 (9) 5-6.
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• Information can be disseminated many ways beside through a lecture, consider posting
material to read, giving students access to websites or course auxiliary materials to
illustrate concepts
• While students are in the classroom, have them engage in the material by solving
problems, asking you questions, or answering questions. You can use the time to check on
their mastery of the material, to help them to learn better or clarify misconceptions
• Ask students to check each other's homework, discuss their differences and then have an
opportunity to redo their improved/corrected solutions (have them hand in both versions).
This might be done out of class.
• Use blackboard to give self-assessment quizzes with the answers explained after the
deadline for doing it
• Give students assignments that prepare them to come to class ready to engage in the
material. Use class to reinforce or apply content not to go over what was covered in the
assignment
• Give students explicit criteria on how you will grade papers, projects, etc. in advance of
when they complete the assignment.
o Give students opportunities to give each other formative feedback either prior to
or instead of you reviewing every product (especially homework problems).
o Allow students to give feedback using your criteria on drafts and they you will
receive better papers
If you incorporate some of these ideas, you might need to adjust the balance in your syllabus or
consider the total picture of what you are doing in the course.
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Making sense of students' complaints that the
instructor or the course was unfair
Research shows that students complain that a course or an instructor was unfair when there is a
disconnect among the goals or objectives of the class, such as how the students were taught, what
the students were expected to do and how they were assessed. Courses that are aligned or
consistent in all of these areas are more likely to be perceived as fair. Students might think they
they are too difficult or too challenging, but fair if they are aligned.
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Keep these questions separate from the course evaluation forms that students need to complete.
This should be formative feedback just for you.
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Then the next time you teach this course discuss on the first day how your course is aligned. You
might want to show your students that the course is aligned in the syllabus. Students will accept
why you are asking them to do something if they see is as congruent with the goals of the course.
Aligned courses lead to more learning.
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• If a professor's grading policy puts a heavy emphasis on class participation, group work,
or written assignments, then that professor probably wants students to be creative, to
engage in dialogue, and to interpret texts freely Students may not realize this unless you
tell them. However, some times we can give the wrong message by our grading policies.
for example.
• If the grading system is simply an average of two of three test scores, with no emphasis
on participation or interactivity, then some students might assume that the professor
would almost rather the students not show up for class and get the notes from a friend. So
we need to be sure we are being consistent with our messages and our goals.
Justin Everett set me this idea which comes fror "If your Syllabus Could Talk," By
Monica D'Antonio in_Chronicle Careers_at
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/07/2007071901c/careers.html
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Also you might remind your students to complete the online course evaluation form since it will
not be given out in class.
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On the first day of class help your students to
see the overall consistency in your course
When you plan your course you want to align your objectives with the teaching/learning
activities and with what and how you assess your students. This is considered a best practice in
education because it leads to increased learning. While you may align your course or make it
internally consistent, students may not see this overall integration or alignment. Therefore, you
want to make this alignment explicit to the students. You should explain how the course is
aligned to the students on the first day and describe it in the syllabus. You might put a table in to
show your alignment of objectives, teaching/learning activities and assessment.