Instructional / Course Design
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Are Learning Outcomes Corrosive? Isn’t it About How You Frame Them?
[social-bio] A recent article in CAUT Bulletin (January 2013) by Frank Furedi discussed the corrosiveness of learning outcomes. As I read through the author’s comments and opinions, I returned to the same questions of: “Isn’t it about how you frame learning outcomes? Shouldn’t the conversations be about how learning outcomes contribute to the learning process? Shouldn’t we as educators be focused on student learning?” I found the article to be very interesting, as I believe that each of the author’s arguments against learning outcomes may be flipped around to show the positive aspects. The article lists four main consequences of learning outcomes: First, that learning outcomes threaten to disrupt the…
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Student Evaluations of Teaching: What are we really measuring?
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler with Sheryl Mills On the recent CBC Early Edition podcast, the issue of what standardized testing was really assessing was raised. I find a similar concern arises with student evaluations of teaching. The debate of the validity and meaning is not new, but recent findings further suggest that when asking student about their instructors what we are actually measuring may not be what we expected. We may be looking at the gas gauge to measure speed. We do not appear to be measuring learning, or at least the actively engaged involvement with material that produces increased confidence, higher attendance, greater usefulness of reading textbooks, and better…
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Planning or Re-Designing a Course: Where to Begin
[social-bio] You have a new course to plan or are planning to re-design a current course. Where do you begin? The place where you should begin is technically called a front-end analysis, but could be thought of as the pre-planning you do before you actually start lesson planning. The first step involves exploring what it is that the instruction or course is intended to do. For example, ask yourself the question, “What do we want students to be able to do after taking this course that they can’t do now?” You should take a moment to confirm that this is an instructional problem, which is, “a problem that can be…
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Course Learning Outcomes or Course Learning Objectives?
Summary: Clarify the difference between course learning outcomes and objectives. Understand their impact on student engagement and success. Find out how to enhance your course design! Date of publishing: January 14, 2013 What exactly are course learning outcomes and why are higher educational institutions moving in this direction? First, the distinction between course learning outcomes and course learning objectives needs to be established. Course learning outcomes are student-centred and are statements of what a learner is expected to know, understand, and/or be able to demonstrate after completion of a process of learning (Kennedy et al). On the other hand, course learning objectives are instructor centred and explain what the instructor…
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Bridges, Obstacle Courses, and Snowdrifts: What are we building for our students?
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler In my day… (or so the story starts), we had it tough. Whether that difficulty involved walking uphill in knee-deep snow, punch cards or hours in dusty stacks, there was something that challenged us as students. Now as educators we get to decide where we build obstacle courses so students understand what it means to face adversity, or where we build bridges that simplify and celebrate efficiencies just as The Bridge Builder did in Will Allen Dromgoole’s poem. This choice of repeating or removing obstacles reveals the beliefs we have about those experiences and the value we place on that difficulty. Do we see merit…
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What is Flipped Teaching?
[social-bio] Flipped teaching is a new instructional method that has risen with the proliferation of high-speed Internet connections. Flipped teaching is the process of moving lecture content from face-to-face class time to before class by assigning it as homework. Often this involves students watching lecture videos prior to coming to class. Why would you want to do this? The reason to use flipped teaching is to be able to use interactive learning methods within face-to-face class time. Rather than spending an hour lecturing, you can spend the hour having students working on problems independently or in groups, working on or discussing cases, group discussion, receiving assistance from you…anything you want!…
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The Value of Timely Feedback
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler “It’s a challenge to try and be flexible… If we can’t do something when it needs to happen, then its timeliness is gone and we’ve missed the opportunity.” – Gordon Knoble* When the outcomes and assessment strategy for assignments have been plotted and we know what feedback students will receive, there still remains the question of “when.” When will students receive feedback? And why does timing matter? Timing of feedback is one of the predictors of students learning as outlined by Grant P. Wiggins’s 1998 book, Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance, and summarized by David Wees in 2010 post The…
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Instead of a MOOC, How About a SOOC?
[social-bio] This post was originally published on Heather Ross’s blog on October 3, 2012 There’s been a lot of talk about MOOCs lately. I’ve even written a couple of posts related to them here and here. We were talking about them during a recent staff meeting and the term SOOC came out of my mouth. My boss said I should trademark it, but I’m not sure that A) someone else hasn’t already said or B) trademarking such a term would be in the spirit of what I’m advocating. A SOOC is a “small open online course” (as opposed to the “massive open online course”) and I’m currently building one for…
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Teaching Online: A Practical Guide
[social-bio] The Book Ko, S. & Rossen, S. (2010). Teaching online: A practical guide (3rd ed.) New York, NY: Routledge. The target audiences of this book are post-secondary instructors and instructional designers. It is extremely thorough and covers three main topics of Getting Started, Putting the Course Together and Teaching in the Online Classroom. Getting Started is an overview of online teaching, including answers to many common questions or concerns, reasons why classes should be offered online and also a detailed look at your institution’s level of readiness. At the University of Saskatchewan we fall into the high-readiness category, which bodes well for any instructors that are moving into teaching…
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BE VOCAL: Characteristics of Successful Online Instructors – An Article Review
[social-bio] If I had to recommend just one article for instructors new to online education, it just might be BE VOCAL: characteristics of successful online instructors by John R. Savery (Savery, John R. (2005). BE VOCAL: characteristics of successful online instructors. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 4(2), 141-152). In it, Savery describes many of the best practices that I suggest to instructors and faculty who are designing or teaching online courses in what he calls the VOCAL model. VOCAL is an acronym that stands for Visible, Organized, Compassionate, Analytical, and Leader-by-Example. Visible refers to what we often call “instructor presence”. In an online course, an instructor cannot see their students…