1. Designing Effective and Innovative Courses in Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry Audio access: Call in 1-800-704-9804 Access code: 6316214 Please mute your phone by pressing *6 Alternate number: 1-404-920-6604 (not toll-free) Technical problems? Contact John at jmcdaris@carleton.edu Program begins at 3 pm EDT, Thur. Mar. 29 Please bookmark the workshop program at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign2 012/program.html

2. Introduction  On the Cutting Edge, funded by NSF and supported by NAGT.  Workshop is follow-on to summer 2011 workshop on Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry in the 21 st Century  Second time Cutting Edge has offered a topic-specific course development workshop

3. Introduction  Focus on min/pet/geochem course design will allow us to brainstorm topic-specific issues  Leading edge ideas in these fields, and how we can integrate aspects of these into undergraduate courses  Interesting opportunities to integrate GIS and remote sensing  Making courses relevant  Designing outstanding hybrid courses

4. Introduction  Builds on 17 years of course design workshops  Emphasis on workshop  Will leave you well on your way to following through  Benefit from everyone’s expertise, develop a network  Add to the Cutting Edge collections of resources for teaching MPG for the benefit of the community

5. Workshop personnel John McDaris Dave Mogk Barb Tewksbury David McConnellRachel Beane

6. Collaborate nuts and bolts  Muting your phone – press *6  Optimizing windows  Using the chat function  Raising your hand; other tips  Problems? Please do not use the chat function to report problems. Send email to  John at jmcdaris@carleton.edujmcdaris@carleton.edu or post a question on the tech thread of the discussion board.  All important links and instructions are on the workshop Program page!

7. Mineralogy Your primary specialty Petrology OtherGeochemistry

8. Academic level of students in the course you are working on at this workshop? First year studentsFirst year and sophomores Juniors and seniorsAll four years

9. Which are true in your department? Only min is requiredMin and pet are required We have a hybrid Earth materials course instead of min and pet Geochem is not taught as a separate course in our department Min, pet, & geochem are required None of them are required

10. Do you have experience in GIS and/or remote sensing? A.Yes, and I include GIS/RS assignments in courses that I teach B.Yes, I have extensive experience but I don’t include it in my courses C.Yes, I have a bit of experience but I don’t include it in my courses D.No

11. Workshop overview  Kickoff – goals  April 12 – designing effective assignments and activities; making courses relevant; presentation on the role of the affective domain.  May 3 – showcase of best ideas so far; presentation on assessment; discussion of hybrid courses, GIS/RS, and project design.  Summer work  October 25 online poster session

12. Making courses more effective  Major theme of On the Cutting Edge has been improving student learning by making courses more effective.  This workshop not only to develop great new assignments and activities but also to address the effectiveness of courses as a whole.

13. What does it mean to make a course more effective?  Course Audition and Spoken Language at RIT School for the Deaf  For pre-service teachers who will have hearing-impaired students in class  Instructor wanted students well-prepared for future tasks as in-service teachers  Goal: students will be able to analyze pupil characteristics, classroom performance, and learning environments to design, implement, and assess lesson plans that will enhance spoken language learning.

14. Goal: Analyze pupil characteristics, classroom performance, and learning environments to design, implement, and assess lesson plans that will enhance spoken language learning  Previous organization  Around topics such as nature and physiology of hearing loss, interpreting audiograms, troubleshooting hearing aids, designing lesson plans  Final high stakes project – not successful  New organization  Moderately hearing-impaired child  Severely hearing-impaired child  Profoundly deaf child

15. Goal: analyze pupil characteristics, classroom performance, and learning environments to design, implement, and assess lesson plans that will enhance spoken language learning  Same topics revisited with increasing complexity in each course chunk  Enables students to have repeated practice toward goals with increasing independence  Same overall content but goals threaded throughout the course  Students better prepared for future

16. What does it mean to make a course more effective?  Example from a Mineralogy course designed at a Cutting Edge workshop several years ago  Required course for geo majors  Instructor wanted students to do more than just “know about” minerals – wanted students to be able to use knowledge to solve geological problems.  Goals: Students will be able to synthesize mineralogical data (visual inspection, petrographic microscopy, XRD and SEM/EDS) to address specific geological problems.

17. Goals: synthesize mineralogical data (visual inspection, petrographic microscopy, XRD and SEM/EDS) to address specific geological problems.  Previous organization  Around topics such as crystal chemistry, Miller indices, systematic mineralogy, lattice structures, space groups, etc.  Final project to “pull it all together”  New organization  Core  Mantle  Crust  Content in context, increasing complexity of practice in analysis and synthesis

18. Making a course more effective  Faculty commonly have “application” goals as well as content goals.  Typical course organization  Teach the content background and techniques for most of the semester.  Assign a high stakes final project - can students apply what they’ve learned and do sophisticated hypothesis-framing, independent data-finding, analysis, and communication on their own?  Success is typically mixed and commonly doesn’t “stick” well

19. Making a course more effective  If you want students to be good at something, they must practice.  Course is more effective if students have practice toward the “independent analysis” goals threaded throughout the course instead of just in the final project.  Articulation of goals beyond content coverage and technique mastery are important because they drive what kind of practice students need during a course.

20. Importance of goals to course design  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  Content coverage is not enough to enable students to achieve 2 nd set of goals

21. Importance of goals to course design  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.  Requires very different kinds of practice to enable students to achieve the 2 nd set of goals

22. Common denominator  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….

23. 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

24. Approaching it from the standpoint of what 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  In context of min or pet or geochem, what do you do? What does analyze, evaluate, etc. involve?  Alternatively, what is unique about your world view/the view of min or pet or geochem??  We’ll give you a few minutes to think, and then we’ll hear from everyone.

25. What we’re going to do  Set goals: what do you want your students to be good at?  Plan the course: how will you cover content plus thread practice on the goals throughout the course?  Develop assignments: what assignments/activities would help students make progress toward the goals?  This is an effective design method; not meant to be the only effective one

26. An aside on terminology  Design model is goals-focused  Terminology: goals vs. objectives vs. outcomes vs. learning goals vs. learning objectives vs. learning outcomes  Geology faculty at our workshops largely not fluent in edu-speak  Some have encountered terms defined differently in different venues  Our workshop participants wasted time and energy coping with the distinctions

27. An aside on terminology  For our workshops, we collapsed goals, objectives and outcomes into one standard English term “goals”.  Goals for us will be concrete and measurable (“My goal in life is to make a million $$”; “My goal next year is to make the Olympic sock wrestling team.”

28. Goals: teacher-focused or student-focused?  Teaching is commonly viewed as being teacher-centered.  Reinforced by the teaching evaluation process  Commonly reinforced by how we phrase course goals: “I want to expose my students to….” or “I want to teach my students about…” or “I want to show students that…”

29. Goals: teacher-focused or student-focused?  “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

30.  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) http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9853 Goals: teacher-focused or student-focused?

31.  Focus should be on what the students are able to do as a result of having completed the course  Not just what the instructor will expose them to or show them.  Need to set course goals for the students, not the teacher.

32. Goals: teacher-focused or student-focused?  We’ll set student-focused goals  We’ll answer the question what do I want my students to be able to do??  I want my students to use their strong background in order to ____ rather than just  I want my students to have a strong background in ____

33. Goals involving lower order thinking skills  Knowledge, comprehension, application explain describe paraphrase list identify recognize calculate mix prepare

34. Examples of goals involving lower order thinking skills  At the end of this course, students will be able to:  list the major factors that can lead to slope failure.  identify common rocks and minerals.  recognize examples of erosional and depositional glacial landforms on a topographic map.  cite examples of poor land use practice.  know how to read phase diagrams.  calculate standard deviation for a set of data.

35. Examples of goals involving lower order thinking skills  At the end of this course, students will be able to:  discuss the major ways that groundwater can become contaminated.  compare and contrast the features of the three major types of plate boundaries.  describe how pressure and temperature influence the behavior of rocks during deformation, and give an illustrative example.  explain how the greenhouse effect works and explain why burning of fossil fuels increases the greenhouse effect.

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

37. Goals involving higher order thinking skills  Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, some types of application predict interpret evaluate derive design formulate analyze synthesize create

38. Examples of goals involving higher order thinking skills  At the end of this course, students will be able to:  evaluate geologic risk in an unfamiliar area and make an informed decision about where to live.  identify interconnections in systems and predict how changes in one part/aspect of the system will influence other parts/aspects of the system.  analyze the evolution of a region over time.  use data from recent Mars missions to re- evaluate pre-2004 hypotheses about Mars geologic processes and history/evolution

39. 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.  Frame a hypothesis and collect appropriate field data to address a research question.  Design models of ___  Solve unfamiliar problems in ____  Find and evaluate information/data on ____  Predict the outcome of ____

40. 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

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

42. What kind of goals to set?  Higher order or lower order thinking skills?  Measurable outcomes or not?  Abstract or concrete goals?

43. We’ll set goals with higher order thinking skills  Overarching 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 goals involving lower order thinking skills

44. Why is it important to articulate higher order goals?  Students learn more when they successfully use their knowledge to do higher order thinking skills tasks.  Higher order goals tasks are hard for students.  If you want students to be successful, they must practice.  Assignments and activities need to give students repeated, relevant practice related to the goals that you value.  Can’t design effective activities if you don’t have the goals in mind.

45. We’ll set concrete goals with measurable outcomes 1  Clearer path to designing a course when overarching 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.  A: Students will be able to interpret unfamiliar tectonic settings based on information on physiography, volcanic activity, and seismicity. Vs.  B: Students will understand plate tectonics.  A is measurable; B requires a proxy. 1 You can design a task that students can do that will allow you to measure directly whether they have have achieved the goal.

46. We’ll set concrete rather than abstract goals  Abstract goals are laudable but difficult to assess directly and difficult translate into practical course design  Students will appreciate the complexity of Earth systems.  Students will be able to think like scientists.

47. Do these goals meet our criteria?  Students will be exposed to the main concepts in structural geology.  Students will understand that global warming is a complex issue.  Students will be able to identify rocks and minerals.  Students will be able to apply their knowledge of groundwater contamination to analyze reports and claims in the popular press.

48. Course goals draft  Go to the Participants page on the workshop web site; click on goals next to your name.  Fill in the course information section.  Write a draft of your higher order goals and answer the questions in the first section.  Stop before the “grand challenges” section.  Save often!!! And keep a Word doc backup (template available on Program page).  Leave Collaborate on; hang up your phone.  Post questions to chat.  Call back in to 1-800-704-9804 at 4:30, using access code 6316214.

49. Feedback on goals draft  Access each participant’s goals page via the Participants page, and provide feedback in the discussion box at the bottom.  Do the goals meet our “rules” (student- focused, higher order, measurable outcomes, concrete rather than abstract)?  What suggestions do you have for improving wording or focus and for threading goals throughout the semester?  What do you particularly like about the goals?  Leave Collaborate on; call back in to 1- 800-704-9804 at 5:00, using access code 6316214.

50. A list of leading edge ideas  Would be useful to have a list of grand challenges, leading edge ideas, and frontiers in MPG that could be incorporated into courses.  During the workshop  Brainstorm an initial list  Add to the list over the course of the workshop  Develop ways to integrate into courses

51. A list of grand challenges, leading edge ideas, frontiers  Break into small groups - group assignments are on the Program page  Each group makes a list on its workspace page – link on Program page.  Add relevant data sources or references if possible.  We will organize the ideas and make a web page.

52. Small-group brainstorming sessions  Leave Collaborate on; hang up phone.  Go to the Workshop Program page, and call back in using your group’s code.  Group task:  Assign a time keeper and a recorder.  Brainstorm a list of the current grand challenges, leading edge ideas, and frontiers in mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry.  Post questions to Collaborate chat, if you like.  Groups finish by 5:30.  Call back in to 1-800-704-9804 at 5:30, using access code 6316214.

53. Homework for April 12  HW is also listed on Workshop Program page and on the Assignment #1 page  Complete the daily road check by Fri. noon.  Finish goals review by Apr. 5 if not yet done.  Read the feedback that the others have provided on your goals draft and ideas, and revise.  Do not overwrite your original goals.  Enter your revised goals in the revised goals section on your own goals page.  Finish your revised goals by midnight April 11.  Answer the other questions on your goals workspace page by midnight April 11.  Read and contribute to discussion threads.  Resources: online CD tutorial at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/index.html

54. Thank you for your hard work today!  We are all looking forward to working with you over the next seven months.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send an email.