Workshop Program
Tuesday, September 6th
WCC STEM faculty engaged in a discussion about Big Ideas of instruction
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Provenance: Kaatje van der Hoeven Kraft, Whatcom Community College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
5:30 PM --- Welcome and Introductions (Lopez Room)
Goals of the Workshop
- Identify goals and essential questions of their courses
- Articulate big ideas for student learning
- Articulate learning targets and design aligned assessments (success criteria)
- Design/modify a learning activity based on best practices from research on learning
- Align learning goals, assessments and instruction
- Build a community of practice that supports student learning across STEM at WCC
6:30-8:30PM
Backward Design: Enduring Concepts Gallery Walk and overview
Presentation and Gallery Walk questions (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 2.2MB Sep5 16)
Gallery Walk Responses (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 20.6MB Sep7 16)
Wednesday, September 7th
Morning
8-9am: Breakfast, Seaview Lounge
9-noon: Backwards Design II: Essential Questions, Course level goals and learning targets & success criteria (Lopez Room)
Essential Questions & Goals (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 6.5MB Sep5 16)
Guidelines for Enduring Understandings (Acrobat (PDF) 58kB Oct21 15)
Guidelines for Essential Questions (Acrobat (PDF) 55kB Oct22 15)
PDF version of Course Design Template (Acrobat (PDF) 93kB Sep5 16)
Course Design Template in Excel (Excel 2007 (.xlsx) 22kB Sep5 16)
Articulating course-level (aspirational or visionary) goals for student learning
Complete the Teaching Goals Inventory to help you "discover" the goals of your teaching
Example Syllabus for Mineralogy Course (Acrobat (PDF) 5.5MB Oct23 15) illustrating how big ideas, essential questions, and course-level goals can be implemented in a syllabus
Reflection and Action Planning
Assessment, Learning Targets & Success Criteria (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 463kB Sep7 16)
- Introduction to Bloom's Taxonomy
Image of Bloom's taxonomy levels and some verbs
Provenance: From http://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/info_team_members/currdev/effective_materials/learning_goals.html - has Creative Commons stamp on it.
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
- Does the learning outcome identify what students will be able to do after the learning experience?
- Is it clear how you would measure achievement of the learning outcome?
- Do chosen verbs have a clear meaning?
- Is the level of cognitive understanding appropriate? Is it aligned with your actual expectations and with student ability? Do your outcomes cover a range of levels?
- Is the terminology familiar/common? If not, is knowing the terminology a goal?
- Is the outcome relevant and useful to students (e.g. connected to their everyday life, or does it represent a useful application of the ideas)?
- Does the outcome align with your course-scale goals?
- Activity: Write Assessments Aligned with your Learning Outcomes
- Reflection and Action Planning
12:00-1:00 PM --- Lunch (Seaview Lounge)
Afternoon
1pm-5pm (Lopez Room)
Course Design I: Motivation and Metacognition
Metacognition + Motivation presentation (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 4.4MB Sep7 16)
Handout with summary of research (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) PRIVATE FILE 143kB Oct3 15)
Example Syllabus that interweaves metacognition and motivation throughout the course (Acrobat (PDF) 522kB Sep7 16)
- Student Learning: student learning is most effective when students are asked to connect content to their prior knowledge, when they are actively engaged in negotiating meaning of the content, are supported to be able to build toward more complex ideas (scaffolded) and are provided with opportunities to reflect on their learning experiences. How well did this lesson support these aspects of learning? Use examples from the lesson.
- Engagement: Students are more likely to be engaged in the content when they are able to interact with their peers, in a safe and community-building environment, and when the content is relevant or authentic. How well did this lesson support these aspects of engagement? Use examples from the lesson.
- Motivation: Students are more likely to be motivated to learn if they believe they can be successful at the task asked of them, believe they are supported if they encounter difficulties, and they value the content they are learning (does it relate to their own lives and/or interests). In addition, students also have social goals, when engaging in content, if they are also able to attend to those social goals, they are more likely to stay engaged and motivated to learn. How well did this lesson support these aspects of motivation? Use examples from the lesson.
- Metacognition: Students are more likely to learn deeply if they have the opportunity to reflect on their learning, both about how their understanding has changed, but also what aspects allowed their learning to occur and to identify areas that require more attention in order to more effectively understand the content. How well did this lesson support these aspects of metacognition? Use examples from the lesson.
- Important Resources for all:
Personal Reflection and Action Planning
End of the day evaluation
6-8pm: Dinner, Victoria Room
Thursday, September 9th
Morning
8-9am: Breakfast, Seaview Lounge
9am-noon: Course Design II: Aligning your course goals with your assessment through instructional design (Lopez Room)
Presentation on Course Design II (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 1.1MB Sep8 16)
- Work on design of activity or on incorporation of strategy across whole course
- Check for alignment between activity and learning outcomes. Turn to your neighbor and review each others' activity-outcome alignment
- Building on action plan steps developed in previous units, compile an action plan that will support successful completion of workshop activities and implementation into a specific course, including resources for future work
12-1pm: Lunch, Seaview Lounge
Afternoon
1-5pm: Lopez Room
- Small and Individual work groups
- Report out on work (4-4:45pm)
WCC Math Faculty collaborating on course design
Provenance: Kaatje van der Hoeven Kraft, Whatcom Community College
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Strategies for Ongoing Improvement
Additional resources
Observation protocols
- COPUS (Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM) from Carl Weiman group - easy training, any colleague can get trained and help you out. Focuses on how instructors and students spend time in the classroom.
- RTOP (Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol); all of the items are shown here. This requires a bit more extensive training, but is still very accessible.
Alternative evaluations
Additional course design resources
- Course design tutorial from On the Cutting Edge
- Pedagogy in Action has information about and examples of many, many different kinds of teaching techniques
- On the Cutting Edge has lots of resources about designing courses around specific topics, subject areas, or strategies
- Teaching Introductory Geoscience has lots of resources and ideas that are more specifically focused on introductory courses, including teaching large courses and motivating students
4:45-5:00 PM --- Workshop Wrap-up (Lopez Room)
Show Resources for Bloom's Taxonomy
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