1. PHILOSOPHY COURSE DESIGN Cameron Fenton

2. AGENDA 1. Content Based Approaches to Course Design 2. Integrated Course Design

3. WHY IS THIS LAST? You might wonder why a workshop on course design is at the end of my workshop series and not the beginning. Good course design requires some understanding of grading, feedback, classroom management, and classroom activities. Since we’ve already talked about those things, we can focus mostly on the design process today.

4. MAJOR SOURCE L. Dee Fink Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses (2003)

5. CONTENT BASED COURSE DESIGN

6. WHAT IS IT? Content based courses are focused on conveying as much information as possible to students, usually through lectures. Students are expected to learn as much of the content as possible and then recall and rephrase that information for assignments and tests.

7. 1. LIST OF TOPICS Step One: The professor thinks of several topics that are important for the course Step Two: The professor develops lectures for each of the important topics Step Three: The professor writes a midterm and a final exam to evaluate students Pros: Very fast and easy Cons: No focus on student learning / students will learn concepts and facts at best, but most will simply memorize content

8. 2. LIST OF ACTIVITIES Step One: The professor thinks of several topics that are important for the course Step Two: The professor designs activities for each topic Step Three: The professor develops lectures to supplement the activities Step Four: The professor writes a midterm and an exam Pros: Attempts to use active learning to benefit student learning. Still relatively fast and easy. Cons: Lacks integration and still isn’t focused on learning.

9. THE PROBLEM While any successful course will have to cover some content, this shouldn’t be the only thing instructors focus on. These courses aren’t ideal because they don’t encourage either reflective or experiential learning.

10. INTEGRATED COURSE DESIGN

11. WHAT IS IT? Integrated course design focuses on making a course in which each course component is consistent with and supportive of the other components. In Fink’s model, this means that (1) learning goals, (2) teaching and learning activities, and (3) feedback and assessment should all support each other. For example, if you have a particular activity you want to use, you should be able to explain how that activity fulfils the learning goals of the course, and how your assessment model will measure the success of the activity.

12. HOW DO YOU DO IT? Fink recommends using a process called backward design. Notice that the content based course design methods involve starting with the important topics, and then designing everything else around those topics. Backward design starts with a question about learning and then everything else is designed around your answer.

13. BACKWARD DESIGN: LEARNING GOALS Backward design starts with a question, what do you hope your students will have learned and remembered a few years after the course is over? Your answers to this question will form the basis of the learning goals for the course. Learning goals are exactly what they sound like; the stuff you want your students to learn.

14. BACKWARD DESIGN: ASSESSMENT Once you have your learning goals, you ask yourself another question. What would your students have to do to convince you that they had achieved those learning goals?

15. BACKWARD DESIGN: ACTIVITIES Once you have a set of assessments for your learning goals, there is one more question to ask yourself. What would students need to do during the course to be able to do well on the assessments you chose?

16. INTEGRATION

17. EXAMPLE CASE: INTEGRATION PROBLEMS Learning Goals: 1. Students will be able to explain the key ideas of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. 2. Students will be able to think critically about ethical problems.

18. Teaching and Learning Activities: 1. Two lectures each week.

19. Feedback and Assessment: 1. Midterm 2. Exam

20. PROBLEM? Even if we assume that the professor is a good lecturer and that the students are good readers and note-takers, this course is still in trouble. First, the teaching and learning activities do not line up with the stated learning goals. Students might be able to explain the key ideas of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics, but they have no opportunity to practice thinking critically. Good critical thinking skills don’t develop without practice and listening to a lecture isn’t practice.

21. Second, the assessment and feedback can either line up with the learning goals, or with the teaching and learning activities, but not both. If the professor tests only for content, which is all he taught, his assessment lines up with his teaching and learning activities, but not his learning goals. He’s not testing his students’ ability to think critically. If he decides to test for critical thinking skills, then his assessment lines up with his learning goals, but not with his teaching and learning activities. He never taught them how to use critical thinking.

23. ONE PROBLEM ALWAYS MAKES TWO PROBLEMS As soon as the professor breaks one of the connections, he has to break two. Fink argues that any course with two broken connections is a broken course. There will be a major disconnect somewhere and no way to resolve it without changing the way the course is designed.

24. INTEGRATED COURSE DESIGN: STEP-BY-STEP I’m only going to cover Fink’s first five steps (of twelve). These cover building strong primary components of a course and should give you enough to get started. 1. Identify important situational factors 2. Identify important learning goals 3. Formulate appropriate feedback and assessment procedures 4. Select effective teaching and learning activities 5. Make sure the primary components are integrated

25. ACTIVITIES After I explain each step, you’re going to get a chance to try the step in your table group. To make things a little easier, and faster, I’d like you to design an Introduction to Philosophy course. By the end, you’ll have a rough (very rough) framework for an integrated course.

26. 1. IDENTIFY IMPORTANT SITUATIONAL FACTORS The aim in this step is to determine what background factors are going to influence your course design. How many students are in the class? What level of student is the course aimed at? (1 st year, 3 rd year, graduate) How often does the class meet? Does the department have any policies or curricular goals that apply to your class? Have you taught the course before? Are you enthusiastic about the course?

27. ACTIVITY In groups, provide answers to the following questions. Write your answers down somewhere as you’ll want them later. Feel free to add any other situational factors you think would influence the course: How many students are in the class? What level of student is the course aimed at? (1 st year, 3 rd year, graduate) How often does the class meet? Have you taught the course before? Are you enthusiastic about the course?

28. 2. IDENTIFY IMPORTANT LEARNING GOALS Learning goals specify what you want your students to accomplish. Learning goals should start with a verb (remember, create, connect, value, analyze, etc.) When thinking about learning goals, figure out what you want your students to take away from the course. What do you think is really important? For example, you might want them to remember the difference between consequentialism and deontology, but not be too worried if they remember the differences between Bentham and Mill.

29. EXAMPLE LEARNING GOALS A year after this course is over, I want and hope that students will… 1. Remember the key differences between consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. 2. Apply ethical theories to real-world problems. 3. Value the importance of careful argumentation. 4. Know how the scientific method works and how it relates to epistemology. 5. Be able to construct and evaluate arguments.

30. ACTIVITY Work in groups to create a short list of learning goals for your course. Write your answers down somewhere. Remember to use verbs to describe your goals. Completing the following sentence can help get you started: A year after this course is over, I want and hope that students will…

31. 3. FORMULATE APPROPRIATE FEEDBACK AND ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES Auditive Assessment- (1) seeks to audit student learning as a basis for grades and (2) records the results of the learning process Educative Assessment- seeks to help students learn better Fink suggests using FIDeLity (ugh) feedback to assist with educative assessment. Frequent, immediate, discriminating (based on clear criteria and standards), and delivered lovingly.

32. Educative assessment should be forward-looking. Instead of testing to see if students understand the content covered in the last few weeks, forward-looking assessment looks at what you want your students to be able to do with what they learn. Educative assessment also focuses on authentic tasks. Instead of asking students to recite definitions of concepts, you ask them to use their knowledge of the concepts to solve a problem.

33. EXAMPLE FROM FINK Auditive assessment- 1. List three distinctive characteristic of each country in X region. 2. Which of the following features most accurately characterizes country X in this region? These questions test if a student can remember information presented to them.

34. Educative assessment: “Imagine that you are working for an international company that wants to establish a commercial presence in this region. The com­pany sells a product that requires a modest per capita income for people to purchase it. The corporate executives understand that they will not realize significant income during the first five years or so but they want to establish a foothold in the region with hopes of financial success in the not-too-distant future. The key to success is being in a country that will have enough political stability to allow economic growth and suffi­cient other factors to support at least moderately high earning power among the general population. The company has asked you to serve on an advisory board that will recommend the country in which the company should open a new branch operation. Given what you have learned about the countries in this region, what country would you rec­ommend as best meeting the needs of this company?” To answer this question, students have to know the concepts and facts, but they also have to be able to relate that information to political stability, economic growth, and GNP. Further, they have to compare all of these factors for multiple countries in order to determine the best choice.

35. RUBRICS I’ve talked about how important rubrics are in previous workshops, but Fink’s model makes extensive use of them, so I thought it was worth mentioning again. Rubrics give your students the information they need to meet the learning goals you have set for the course. They also help make sure your assessments align with your learning goals.

36. ACTIVITY In your groups, construct a question that could be used for a small group activity using the principles of educative assessment. Then develop a basic rubric with a three point scale (1- Poor 2- Good 3- Great) and a description of what is required to get each grade. Try to make it an authentic task that assesses your students’ ability to do something using the knowledge from the course. Remember to think about how this assessment relates to your learning goals for the course.

37. 4. SELECT EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES

38. REFLECTIVE WRITING Reflective writing encourages students to think about their role in the learning process. Students write about what they have learned, what they found difficult or confusing, and what questions they have that remain unanswered. Reflection assignments can be as simple as a one-minute paper where students write a few sentences in response to a question about what they’ve learned. For example, what was the most confusing point brought up in today’s class? These are similar to the ‘superlatives’ activity that I described in the active learning workshop.

39. ACTIVITY In your groups, create a classroom activity that would prepare your students to answer the question you created in the last activity. Think about what knowledge and skills they would need to answer that question well, then think about what you could do during class to help students acquire the knowledge and skills they need.

40. 5. MAKE SURE THE PRIMARY COMPONENTS ARE INTEGRATED The final stage we’ll talk about today involves making sure what you have designed so far is integrated. Taking the time to work through this step prevents you from having learning goals that sound great, but are unsupported by your assessment and learning activities.

42. ACTIVITY As a group, fill out the chart from the previous slide to see if your course is integrated. If something doesn’t fit, reconsider either the learning goal or your assessment and learning activities.

44. FEEDBACK Please fill out a feedback form before you leave. Thanks for coming!