Our theme this spring was “Your Course from the Ground Up.” We read about, discussed, and worked on some of the fundamental elements of designing and teaching a whole course or individual lesson. We also learned about how UO faculty approach the challenge of designing and teaching their courses by inviting people in to discuss their experiences in detail and by fanning out to observe classrooms in the wild.
Weeks 1-2
Reading: Chapter 2: A Taxonomy of Significant Learning in Fink, L.D. 2013. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Week 3
You probably have lots of ideas about the knowledge and skills you’d like your students to have when they finish your course. How can you design the course to make sure your students actually acquire that knowledge? We’ll talk about and get some practice with one approach in journal club this week.
Reading:
Pages 67 – 92 of Chapter 3: Designing Significant Learning Experiences I in Fink, L.D. 2013. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
If you have a list of learning objectives for your course, please bring it with you to journal club.
Week 4
Do you use multiple-choice questions on your exams? They are much easier on the grader than other exam formats, but their construction requires careful attention if the test is to be fair, able to assess higher-order cognitive skills, and useful in distinguishing different levels of student ability. This week in journal club we’ll read a review paper that touches on these concerns and others.
Reading:
Xu, X., Kauer, S., & Tupy, S. (2016). Multiple-choice questions: Tips for optimizing assessment in-seat and online. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 2(2), 147.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/stl0000062
Please bring a favorite multiple-choice question with you to journal club this week.
Week 5
How can we assess students’ mastery of learning objectives? Last week we talked about multiple choice exams. This week we’ll cast our net wider, considering other methods and how to give students feedback they can use to improve their work.
Reading:
Pages 92 – 111 of Chapter 3: Designing Significant Learning Experiences I in Fink, L.D. 2013. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Also suggested: Designing Better Quizzes: Ideas for Rethinking Your Quiz Practices. (2018). Faculty Focus, Magna Publications. Available here for free, but registration is required.
It’s week 5- a great time to get some feedback on how students are learning in your course. The UO is currently piloting new student experience surveys. If you’re interested in participating, go to https://provost.uoregon.edu/revising-teaching-evaluations and follow the link in the Phase One section.
Week 6
What strategies can you use to efficiently plan effective class sessions? Our reading this week has some good advice.
Reading:
Chapter 4: Planning Class Sessions in Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (2016). Teaching and learning STEM: A practical guide. John Wiley & Sons. Available as an ebook here or through the UO library.
Note: To prepare for Week 7’s Journal Club, please observe an undergraduate science class, preferably one outside your department so as to mimic the experience of being a student as much as possible. Note what happens in the class: what are the instructor and students doing? Are the students learning actively? How do the instructor and students know if the students are understanding the content? The TEP Peer Teaching Observation Guide is useful to help you know what to look for. Be sure to contact the instructor ahead to time to see if you’re welcome to sit in, and reassure them that our discussions will focus on pedagogical techniques used and not mention specific names or courses!
Week 7
It is incredibly instructive and interesting to observe teachers in the classroom to see how they approach their class sessions, difficult material and situations, classroom management, etc. Observing classes outside your own field is particularly helpful, because relative unfamiliarity with the material more closely mimics the experience of the students. Your homework this week is to observe an undergraduate science class. Note what happens in the class: what are the instructor and students doing? Are the students learning actively? How do the instructor and students know if the students are understanding the content? The TEP Peer Teaching Observation Guide is useful to guide your eye. Be sure to contact the instructor ahead to time to see if you’re welcome to sit in! Come to Journal Club prepared to talk about some of the pedagogical techniques used and how the observation was useful for you. We’ll take care to preserve the anonymity of the instructor and the course.
Week 8
How do you view your syllabus? Is it an inviting introduction to your course, a defensive document, or maybe a little of both? How do your students see it? Join us this week to talk about the syllabus and how to craft a welcoming document that students will engage with.
Reading:
Lund Dean, K., & Fornaciari, C. J. (2014). The 21st-century syllabus: Tips for putting andragogy into practice. Journal of Management Education, 38(5), 724-732. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1052562913504764
Week 9
This week in Journal Club we will have a Teaching Showcase. Robin Hopkins, an Instructor in Human Physiology, will join us to discuss her course called The Science of Health (HPHY 112), which is a Science Literacy Program course. She’ll talk a bit about her general approach and a series of assignments the students do. We’ll also spend some time with her interesting syllabus, which fits right in with our overall focus as we approach the end of the term.
Week 10
We will finish out the year with a discussion about how to make a syllabus your students will find engaging and useable. To prepare, please read: Lund Dean, K., & Fornaciari, C. J. (2014). The 21st-century syllabus: Tips for putting andragogy into practice. Journal of Management Education, 38(5), 724-732. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1052562913504764
Please bring a copy of a syllabus with you to journal club this week.