Fluent Essays

Read the attached chapters from the Book; “Higher education by design: Best Practices for Curricular Planning and Instruction” by Mackh. Discuss the principles of design thinking, based on educational theory and best practices in pedagogical and curricular development in a 3-pages.                                                      Reference: Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design: Best practices for curricular planning and instruction.                                 New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN# 978-0815354185 1 Chapter 1 Beginning With the End in MindBeginning With the End in MindBeginning With the End in Mind Higher education is populated by dedicated professional educators who deliver a high-quality academic experience to their students. However, professional development activities related to teaching are usually lim- ited to occasional workshops featuring a single skill, such as creating a syllabus, techniques for assessment, or new instructional technolo- gies. Many of us attended required onboarding seminars for new faculty members that provided basic instruction in the teaching component of our jobs. Nevertheless, no matter how many workshops or seminars we attend, or how experienced we may be, it is not the same as undergoing a formal program of study into the art, science, practice, and skill of teaching. Faculty members come to their positions as subject-matter experts, having earned the highest degrees available in their respective fields and achieving rec- ognition as producers of new knowledge through research or contributors to culture through creative practice. In fact, these are standard criteria for virtually all faculty job postings. Members of the professorate continue their disciplinary CHAPTER SUMMARY n Educational Philosophy n Backwards Design: Beginning With the End in Mind n Learning-Centric Teaching and Instructional Design n Empathy, Definition, Ideation, and Iteration n Where Next? n The Design Process Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 2 activity throughout their professional lives, with an expectation that each person will make ongoing contributions to knowledge or culture. Furthermore, all faculty members are educators because we teach stu- dents the essential skills and knowledge of our academic disciplines. Our achievements in research or creative activity strengthen this expertise, which we then bring to our classrooms. Professional service further supports our disciplines and our college or university, consequently enriching our teaching as well. Traditional evaluative criteria for promotion and tenure generally split fac- ulty activities into 40\% for research, 40\% for teaching, and 20\% for professional service, but in actual practice, we often spend the majority of our time teaching or on related tasks such as course development, grading, and meeting with stu- dents. According to the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (2003),1 teach- ing and related tasks account for 62\% of faculty members’ time, with 18\% spent on research and 20\% on administrative or other tasks. All of these activities ought to work in concert, and all of them ultimately support the success of our alumni as well as contributing to knowledge and culture. Even when research is valued above all other faculty pursuits (which is especially evident at top-tier research universities), it also contributes to our graduates’ success across disciplines, as shown in Figure 1.1.2 Research, teaching, and service each contribute to student learning and our graduates’ eventual success, either directly or indirectly. 1. Research builds upon existing knowledge to create new learning. 2. Teaching improves and expands student learning. 3. Service translates learning into action that improves communities and citizens. Isn’t it curious, then, that we seldom undergo formal training in educational theory or in curricular and pedagogical development, despite the demonstrable importance of our responsibility to teach? Yet instead of the prerequisite study and certification required of many other educators, faculty members typically learn to teach by teaching, sometimes assisted by colleagues and mentors in our academic disciplines. Speaking from my own experience, the only preparation I received for the first course I taught as a graduate instructor occurred when my academic advisor handed me a copy of the former instructor’s syllabus. He answered my questions and dropped by my classroom on occasion, but for the most part, I was on my own. At the institution I attended for my doctoral studies, graduate instructors were first required to serve as teaching assistants, a task mainly involving taking attendance and grading papers for the instructor of Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . RE SE A RC H Re se ar ch is a p ur po se fu l i nv es �g a� on to cr ea te , d is co ve r, o r le ar n so m et hi ng n ew . Sc ie nc e Te ch no lo gy En gi ne er in g M at he m a� cs H um an i� es A rt s M et ho ds & M et ho do lo gi es Pr oc es s D is co ve ri es Im pa ct s D is se m in a� on W hy /H ow /W ha t U �l ity In st ru m en ta lit y Im pa ct Th eo ry & Pr ax is Te ac hi ng & Le ar ni ng A lu m ni S uc ce ss M et ho ds & M et ho do lo gi es Pr oc es s D is co ve ri es Im pa ct s D is se m in a� on W hy /H ow /W ha t U �l ity In st ru m en ta lit y Im pa ct Th eo ry & Pr ax is Te ac hi ng & Le ar ni ng A lu m ni S uc ce ss M et ho ds & M et ho do lo gi es Pr oc es s D is co ve ri es Im pa ct s D is se m in a� on W hy /H ow /W ha t U �l ity In st ru m en ta lit y Im pa ct Th eo ry & Pr ax is Te ac hi ng & Le ar ni ng A lu m ni S uc ce ss M et ho ds & M et ho do lo gi es Pr oc es s D is co ve ri es Im pa ct s D is se m in a� on W hy /H ow /W ha t U �l ity In st ru m en ta lit y Im pa ct Th eo ry & Pr ax is Te ac hi ng & Le ar ni ng A lu m ni S uc ce ss M et ho ds & M et ho do lo gi es Pr oc es s D is co ve ri es Im pa ct s D is se m in a� on W hy /H ow /W ha t U �l ity In st ru m en ta lit y Im pa ct Th eo ry & Pr ax is Te ac hi ng & Le ar ni ng A lu m ni S uc ce ss M et ho ds & M et ho do lo gi es Pr oc es s D is co ve ri es Im pa ct s D is se m in a� on W hy /H ow /W ha t U �l ity In st ru m en ta lit y Im pa ct Th eo ry & Pr ax is Te ac hi ng & Le ar ni ng A lu m ni S uc ce ss F IG U R E 1 .1 O rg an iz at on al C ha rt o f R es ea rc h Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 4 record. Once we were given a teaching assignment of our own, a copy of the previous instructor’s syllabus and perhaps some verbal advice were treated as sufficient preparation for independent teaching. I opted to take my training a step further by participating in a TEACH Fellowship, a competitive program offered through the university’s Teaching, Learning, & Professional Devel- opment Center.3 This yearlong experience included 18 hours of workshops, videotaped consultations, two midterm evaluations of teaching performance, completion of a teaching portfolio and curriculum design project. None of the other graduate instructors in my program chose to take this step, but I found it to be a valuable asset to my subsequent teaching both then and in my later faculty positions. This book was written as a way to bridge the gap that I observed between the actual practice of teaching and the knowledge that can be gained through focused formal study. As a comparison, consumer electronics have advanced to such high levels that we can use them intuitively right out of the package. Even so, many of us have experienced moments of frustration where we can’t make a device do what we want it to do, wishing it had come with a detailed user’s manual. Author David Pogue and O’Reilly Media produce a series of publications in response to this need—the “Missing Manuals”—beginning with Windows 2000 Pro: The Missing Manual and most currently Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition (2016).4 I’d like you to consider this book in the same spirit—to be the guide for teaching in higher education that most educators never received when we were given our first teaching assignments. The chapters that follow will help those at all levels of experience to design, develop, and deliver excellent educa- tional content to their students. EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY Much of what we do in our classrooms depends on how we view our role as instructors. You’re probably familiar with the debate between an instructor’s role as “a sage on the stage” or “a guide on the side.” Some instructors remain firmly in the sage-on-the-stage camp, lecturing through every class period, while students listen attentively and take copious notes. Conversely, other instructors rarely lec- ture at all, allowing students to construct knowledge independently, intervening only when the student requests assistance. This need not be an either/or proposition. Most courses utilize a variety of instructional strategies, including lecture, project-based learning, discussion, group activities, and more. We might visualize this as a dual continuum as illus- trated by Figure 1.2: the more active the instructor, the less active the student; the more active the student, the less active the instructor. Another common debate involves the philosophical orientation of the classroom toward an instructor-centered or student-centered model. An Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 5 instructor-centered classroom operates under the assumption that the instructor possesses knowledge that she transmits to the students through a one-way com- munication. The instructor is responsible for his or her teaching, and students are responsible for their own learning. In contrast, a student-centered classroom places the student at the forefront of this equation, but this might raise troubling issues such as whether the student is a consumer of education and what respon- sibility the instructor shares in the student’s acquisition of knowledge. For exam- ple, under a completely instructor-centered model, a student who fails a course is wholly responsible for his own failure. However, under a completely student- centered model, the instructor might be deemed to have failed to provide ade- quate instruction rather than the student failing to learn. Taking a learning-centered approach avoids the problems of these extremes. In this model, students are neither passive recipients of transmitted knowledge, nor are they demanding clients. Likewise, the instructor is neither the font of all knowledge nor the students’ servant. The focus of a learning-centered classroom is the subject matter of the course as it occurs within a specific disciplinary con- text, engaging both the student and the instructor as active participants. We might frame learning-centered education as a pedagogical triangle (see Figure 1.3), in which the student, instructor, and subject matter exist within a balanced yet dynamic relationship occurring in the context of a given academic discipline. Therefore, this book adopts a learning-centered educational philosophy. The instructor’s primary responsibility is to create and deliver a learning experience in which the student is an active participant, aligned with a particular academic discipline’s norms and practices and shaped by the instructor’s application of skill and knowledge in teaching. Listening/Note-taking Ac�ve Par�cipa�on Independent Study Lecture Facilita�on Supervision Instructor Ac�vity Student Ac�vity FIGURE 1.2 Student–Instructor Continuum Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 6 BACKWARDS DESIGN: BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND In his bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey rec- ommends “Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind.”5 Even though it’s become some- what cliché, this isn’t just good advice for life—it’s the first step toward planning and designing effective curriculum. Beginning with the end in mind is like plan- ning an expedition: First, you choose the destination, then you plan how you’ll get there. In curriculum design, our destination depends on this question: What skills and knowledge should our students acquire by the time they graduate? Just as we can’t take a road trip without first planning our route, we can’t achieve the goal of producing well-educated graduates unless each course deliberately aligns with that goal, leading students step by step toward the excellence we want them to achieve. When applied to higher education, this is called backwards design.6 Before we go further, let’s stop and consider why we’re talking about this. In higher education, where colleges and universities have clearly defined educational missions, we want our students to do more than just memorize facts—we want them to become accomplished disciplinary practitioners who contribute to our areas of expertise and go on to lead successful, productive lives. We also want to enhance our institution’s reputation for excellence in education and raise the profile of our college and its programs and departments. Therefore, the end we should keep in mind exists on multiple levels: in the outcomes we write that StudentCourse/Subject Instructor Discipline FIGURE 1.3 Pedagogical Triangle Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 7 explain what our students must know and be able to do by the time they gradu- ate; in the learning experiences we design that facilitate our students’ successful attainment of these outcomes; and in the deepening of our knowledge of educa- tional theory and philosophy that will allow us to improve in our instructional delivery and better fulfill our duty as educators. Understandably, research and creative practice receive a great deal of empha- sis as major contributors to our professional reputations and the status of the institutions where we teach, whereas excellence in teaching lacks comparable prestige. Nevertheless, the impact of our teaching extends far beyond the final exam, shaping our students’ academic experience for good or ill. No matter how renowned we may be in our chosen fields, these accomplishments cannot benefit our students at all if we lack the ability to translate our disciplinary expertise into relevant and impactful instruction. Shouldn’t we, therefore, devote at least as much passion, energy, and curiosity to our teaching as we do to our other disci- plinary engagements? Nothing prohibits us from continuing to teach as usual. Attempting to change our professorial habits is a far greater challenge, yet there is much to be gained in the attempt. Certainly, it can be awkward and frustrating to change longstanding habits, but by choosing to reach beyond what’s comfortable to what’s possible, we will benefit our students, our institutions, and ourselves as well. LEARNING-CENTRIC TEACHING AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN Traditional approaches to teaching and learning focus on the subject-matter knowledge and expertise that an instructor conveys to his or her students. When we shift the emphasis to our students’ learning, we must also enter into a mindset of innovation since we are diverging from long-established procedures and habits of mind in higher education. Innovation exists within a three-part framework, represented in Figure 1.4. Desirability is the human factor in innovation. The outcomes we seek through our teaching and curriculum design must be attractive and beneficial to our stu- dents and to the institution for which we work, but they must also be of personal benefit at some level. In other words, our efforts must lead to a course that stu- dents want to take, that our institution wants to offer, and that we want to teach. Viability refers to the institutional framework within which our efforts occur. Our plans and goals must be compatible with the mission, vision, and values of our institutions. They must also align with existing policies, procedures, and administrative requirements in our departments, colleges, schools, and the insti- tution at large. For example, a planned course relying on co-teaching will not be viable if one of the cooperating faculty member’s home departments cannot Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 8 provide a way for the instructor to receive credit for a course taught outside normal channels. Feasibility is the third side of our triangle. Even when we can clearly envi- sion what we hope to achieve and can prove it fits within our given institu- tional context, we must also be able to bring our vision to life. This involves financial resources, administrative support, faculty participation, availability of facilities, as well as things like scheduling and registration. For instance, if an elective course designed for students majoring in a particular discipline is scheduled at the same time as a course required for the major, students cannot enroll regardless of the careful planning and preparation that went into the course’s creation. EMPATHY, DEFINITION, IDEATION, AND ITERATION Empathy is the cornerstone of innovation and the main component in the desir- ability of a product. Just think: Why do people stand in line for days before a new Apple product’s launch? Because Apple has mastered the art of empathy. The company’s focus on desirability leads to products that people are passionate about owning. This is atypical in most commercial ventures. For instance, I used to own a sedan that looked great on the outside, but it was so poorly designed internally that it took my mechanic 14 hours to dismantle the vehicle just to change a leak- ing $5 transmission gasket. He was so frustrated by the attempted repair that he refused to work on the car again. Apple’s focus on customer experience trans- lates into huge sales, whereas the automotive manufacturer’s focus on making a visually attractive yet internally flawed product was ultimately self-destructive— production on that model ceased after just a few years. Viability FeasibilityDesirability Innova�on FIGURE 1.4 Design Venn—Innovation Is Here Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 9 Higher education, of course, doesn’t operate under the same parameters as companies that produce telephones and automobiles, yet empathy-driven inno- vation occurs across a broad range of contexts. Service-based settings like health care, social services, and government agencies’ attempts to envision the client’s needs or wants result in a better user experience. Hospitals, for example, now allow patients to preregister for medical procedures, handling paperwork over the phone or online rather than making patients wait in line and then sit at a reg- istrar’s desk for an hour or more on the day of their procedure. Attention to the human element of a bureaucratic process increased efficiency and reduced stress for all concerned. In this same way, higher education benefits from an empathy-driven perspec- tive. Curriculum designed with the student in mind more fully aligns with a learning-centered model of education. In the field of design, this is known as user experience—a process built on empathy. Learning-centered course design requires that we know our students as fully as possible. Those of us who have been teaching for many years know that stu- dents today are much different than we were ourselves, and they also differ from the students we may have taught early in our careers. Higher education itself has also changed, especially in terms of public perception, which directly impacts how our students view their educational experience. In the not-so-distant past, a bachelor’s degree in virtually any field offered sufficient proof that someone was well-equipped for professional-level employ- ment because this credential was comparatively rare: Just 25\% of the US pop- ulation completed high school in 1940, and only 5\% of the US population held a bachelor’s degree or higher,7 giving a college graduate a distinct edge in the job market. By 2015, however, 88\% of the US population attained a high school diploma, and 33\% earned a bachelor’s degree or higher.8 In other words, it’s more common to hold a bachelor’s degree today than it was to graduate from high school in 1940. The increasing ubiquity of a college degree is exacerbated by the rising cost of higher education and by changing attitudes of parents, students, and legisla- tors. Many students and their parents incur significant debt to finance the cost of a degree, all in the hope that the student will exit college with the ability to secure a well-paying job. Whether or not we educators know that the educational experiences our courses offer are intrinsically valuable, it is difficult for others to understand how they can be worth the expense when they can’t see how the course will equip students with the means to earn a living. We now face a much different set of cultural expectations for higher education than were prevalent when many current faculty members began their careers, and they differ greatly from the norms under which our present system of higher education arose during the last century. Not only has the perception of a college education as valuable for its own sake shifted to an expectation that earning a Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:32:02. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND 10 degree will prepare a student for a career, but our students themselves place less value on educational experiences when they cannot see how they might be personally relevant. Educators, however, continue to believe that students should accept our dis- ciplinary expertise as sufficient reason to trust that what we teach is important and expect students to make their own connections between classroom learning and their eventual careers. Empathy exercised within a learning-centered model of education challenges this traditional stance. For just a moment, let’s put our- selves in the place of our students. Imagine you were told that you had to under- take mandatory professional development by completing a 3-credit hour course. Because you will not be reimbursed for tuition, you enroll in an online course through a public university, at a cost of $1,000. This is a significant expense, not to mention that you’ll have to pay for books and materials on top of the tuition, increasing your cost by an additional $200. Now imagine that the course instruc- tor never explains why this course is required and makes no connection to your professional development. Would you be frustrated and annoyed? Perhaps even resentful? I know I would. When we imagine ourselves in a scenario such as the prior example, we can experience empathy for our students and, consequently, begin to approach our teaching from a more learning-centric model. If we were to benefit from the mandatory training in the previous example, we would need to know why it’s important, how we could apply the course content to our professional lives, and what we were actually supposed to learn. This why, how, and what of instruction is essential. Should it be any different for our own students? On a macro level, our course planning must consider why our students need to know the concepts we intend to teach, how we will convey this information to them, and what learning experiences and assessments will allow them to learn what we’re teaching and let us measure their learning. This process encompasses all of the components we associate with course design: writing outcomes and objectives, textbook selection, creating assignments and assessments, and so on. As we work through these steps, we repeatedly engage empathy and definition on a micro level with each decision we make about the course. Why will this par- ticular textbook best help my students to learn? How should I create this rubric to evaluate their group presentations? What should students be able to do by the time they take the final exam? The first time we teach the course that we planned can serve as a prototype, allowing us to test our instructional strategies to determine whether students successfully acquired the skills and knowledge we intended to convey. Each time we teach the course thereafter is a new opportunity to refine our instructional methods. These iterations allow us to … 15 Chapter 2 Understanding Educational TheoryUnderstanding Educational TheoryUnderstanding Educational Theory As we discussed in Chapter 1, all faculty members, regardless of our primary academic discipline, are educators. However, few of us have spe- cifically studied the ontologies and epistemologies of education, including study of educational or developmental psychology. These concepts are fundamental to understanding how our students think and learn. This chapter provides a basic overview, particularly with regard to young adults. Some of these theories are decades old, yet they remain staples of textbooks used in current educational psychology courses, such as the widely used Essentials of Educational Psychology (Ormond, 2014), among many other mainstays of teacher-training programs. We need not become experts on educational theory or developmental psychology, but gaining a working familiarity with these concepts can facilitate our un- derstanding of why we should implement the approaches to teaching and learning presented in subsequent chapters. Nearly everything we human beings do is supported by theory and philosophy, although many of us remain unaware of it. In higher education, our actions are par- ticularly influenced by two branches of philosophy: ontology and epistemology. CHAPTER SUMMARY n Student Development Theory n Related Theories n Theories and Practices of Teaching and Learning n Theories and Practices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion n Rationale Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 16 To keep things simple, we’ll define ontology as the study of the nature of being, which involves attempting to categorize and understand the kinds of things that exist. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, or as a professor under whom I studied for my PhD explained, it’s “how we know what we know and why we know it.” Scholars are concerned with both of these philosophical concepts, but their applications across academic disciplines vary widely. Moreover, the more deeply we study any given discipline, the narrower our focus becomes. Once we reach the “terminal degree” stage, we’ve become super-specialists in just one knowledge area, understanding what exists within it and why this knowledge is important. In other words, we’ve mastered the ontology and epistemology of our disciplines. Therein lies our claim to disciplinary expertise. At this level of super-specialization, the ontologies and epistemologies of quantum physics would be self-evident to a quantum physicist, but they would be largely opaque to a political historian of Renaissance Italy. Likewise, the quantum physicist would lack sufficient under- standing of the ontologies and epistemologies of historical study of the Italian Renaissance. We know what we know, but we don’t know what other scholars know. Therefore, we gather together in colleges and universities so that collec- tively, we form a comprehensive assemblage of knowledge. To better understand the ideas that support all of our work as educators, we’ll take a brief look at a selection of relevant theories of education. Since our design process begins with understanding our students, we’ll first consider some theo- ries of student development. STUDENT DEVELOPMENT THEORY From approximately ages 18 to 26, college students undergo a period of intense intellectual, social, and emotional growth. They enter college as teenagers, but they leave as adults who are presumably ready to find their own way in the world. Theories related to human development occurring during this age range include student development theory, developmental psychology, and educational psychology. Jean Piaget Jean Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cog- nitive development. His work disrupted longstanding beliefs that children were unable to answer questions correctly only because they lacked proper training. Piaget revealed that development progresses in discrete stages, influenced both by the growing maturity of children’s brains and through environmental input. He proposed that human beings acquire and use knowledge according to “schemas,” or mental maps about the world. For example, an adult would possess a schema Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 17 for a basic task such as going to a movie: arrive at the theater, decide which movie to see, purchase a ticket, enter the theater, find a seat, wait for the lighting to dim, watch the coming attractions, and finally watch the movie. The environment of the theater, the progression of actions, and the experience as a whole would each be part of this schema. Young children have few schemas to explain the world around them, but these form as the child progresses toward adulthood. Intellectual growth is a process of adapting to the world around us, and according to Piaget, it progresses through four distinct stages. First, infants begin life in the sensorimotor stage, marking a major developmental milestone when they are able to understand than an object hidden from view still exists (object permanence). Toddlers and very young children enter the preoperational stage, where they are able to think about things symbolically—a word or other symbol is understood to stand for the object itself. Older school-age children are in the concrete operational stage. They can think logically and work out problems men- tally instead of having to solve them manually. For example, a child in the preop- erational stage might not be able to associate the symbol “5” without counting the number on the fingers of her hand, but a child in the concrete operational stage can use the logical idea of “5” to perform mathematical calculations mentally. Piaget’s last developmental stage is formal operations, lasting into adulthood. During this time, human beings can develop abstract concepts and logically test hypotheses (Piaget, 1936, 1957).1 Although we in higher education might presume that all of our students have achieved the “formal operations” stage of development, this may not actually be the case. Keating (1979)2 found that between 40\% and 60\% of college-age stu- dents failed when attempting formal operation tasks. Dasen (1994)3 found that only one-third of adults ever reached the formal operational stage. For those of us working in higher education, this means we would be wise to implement some of Piaget’s recommendations for teaching an audience of learners in the concrete operations stage. Interestingly, these continue to exist among best practices in teaching and learning today. Figure 2.1 matches Piaget’s recommendations in the left column with some higher educational applications on the right. Piaget’s theories remain a cornerstone of developmental psychology, although not uncontested. For example, Vygotsky (1934)4 and Bruner (1957)5 preferred to think of development as a continuous process and linked more closely with social interaction and language development. Nevertheless, Piaget’s theories remain influential to the present day. Psychosocial Theories Psychosocial theories, such as the foundational ideas promoted by scholars such as Erik Erikson (1959)6 view human development as a series of stages through which individuals experience changes in their thought processes, feelings, Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 18 behavior, values, and the ways in which they relate to themselves and others. Erikson proposed that we can identify eight developmental stages, of which many undergraduates may still be in late adolescence and moving into early adulthood or beyond. Adolescence is marked by establishing one’s identity, setting goals and finding one’s purpose. Young adulthood involves developing lifelong relationships such as finding a life partner and making lasting adult friendships. These devel- opmental stages also include the development of fidelity, which Erikson defines as the ability to accept and make commitments to others even when differences are recognized. Arthur Chickering (1969)7 built upon Erikson’s theories, proposing seven “vectors” or non-sequential developmental tasks that all individuals work through in their journey toward adulthood. These include developing competence, Piaget Higher Education Focus on the process of learning, not only the end result. Instruction in strategies for ideation (e.g., critical thinking, design thinking, lateral thinking); institution-wide emphasis on teaching students to become “lifelong learners” and to acquire critical thinking skills Use active methods that allow students to discover or reconstruct knowledge. Discussion groups (humanities); studio- based learning (the arts); laboratory requirements (the sciences) Use both collaborative and individual activities. Project-based learning; collaborative learning; independent research Match tasks to the student’s level of development. Scaled courses of instruction with simpler content or tasks for freshmen, progressing in complexity to upper-class or graduate- level students The role of the teacher should be that of a facilitator. Student-centered pedagogies; flipped classrooms; online learning; independent study Learning should be active, not passive. Internships, co-op and practicum experiences; project-based and/or collaborative learning Problem-solving skills must be discovered— they cannot be taught. Hands-on, practical learning, including all of the above FIGURE 2.1 Piaget and Higher Education Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 19 managing emotions, moving through autonomy to independence, increasingly mature interpersonal relationships, establishing identity, establishing purpose, and emerging integrity. Student development theories are evident in our everyday observations of our students, whom we know to be highly relational and intensely focused on inter- actions with their peers. The communities in which students choose to associ- ate shape their collegiate experience significantly, such as co-curricular groups, roommates or housemates, romantic partners, or membership in athletic teams or performing arts organizations. This relational focus affects their performance in our classrooms. Knowing it’s normal for our students to be preoccupied by human relationships, we can plan learning experiences that tap into this power- ful motivator, such as collaborative learning and group projects. This knowledge also prepares us to exercise understanding and empathy when these relationships impinge on what we expect our students to accomplish. Mature adults learn how to manage their personal relationships and still perform their jobs adequately, but this is a developmental task most college-age students have not yet mastered. Cognitive and Moral Development Theories Cognitive and moral development theories focus on the ways people think. Law- rence Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development8 explained that human beings progress through six stages occurring at three levels. Elementary school students move through the preconventional level, characterized by obedience to rules set forth by authority figures. In the second stage, conventional morality, individu- als follow social norms, first because they seek the approval of others and later because they accept the existence of law and order. The third stage involves learn- ing that morality is a social contract and developing a genuine interest in the wel- fare of others, leading to an understanding of ethics as a set of universal principles such as justice, equality, and respect for human dignity.9 Perry’s Theory of Intellectual and Ethical Development10 also posits that indi- viduals move through stages, beginning with Dualism, an interpretation of the world as governed by unqualified absolutes of right/wrong or good/bad. This is followed by Relativism, in which the individual recognizes multiplicity in the world and understands that all knowledge is contextual and relative, developing analytical thinking skills and the ability to evaluate different perspectives. Author- ity is seen as open to question, and individuals are able to evaluate their own thinking and to assess their own ideas and the ideas of others. Perry’s model is widely accepted among student development professionals, who regularly see the important transition between Dualism and Relativism occurring among the college students with whom they work. Students who are still in the dualism phase of their development are generally willing to accept whatever their professor has to say as unmitigated truth, since Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 20 they retain a belief in authority figures. Students who have entered the phase of relativism, however, are more likely to evaluate an instructor’s statements criti- cally and to seek additional corroboration, input, or verification before accepting information as fact. They are more likely to question course content, to disagree with assigned readings, or fail to view the instructor as a source of consistently reliable information. Instructors and university administrators often say they want to teach students how to think critically, which is the fundamental skill of relativ- ism. Therefore, we cannot simultaneously become offended when we find ourselves on the receiving end of our students’ questions. Our best course of action in those situations is to provide cogent, thorough, and convincing explanations, just as we would if we were challenged by a colleague or by one of our administrators. Typology Theories Typology theories focus on individual differences in how people view and relate to the world. These include, or are based on, Carl Jung’s theory of psycholog- ical types.11 Jung proposed that human beings primarily receive information through either their senses or through intuition. They make decisions based on either objective knowledge or subjective feelings. They also tend to be either introverted or extroverted. Based on these categories, Jung identified eight per- sonality types, which were further developed by Katherine and Isabel Briggs who proposed that humans have four primary operational modes that govern their flow of energy, how they receive information, how they make decisions, and the everyday lifestyle they prefer (extravert/introvert, sensing/intuitive, thinking/ feeling, judging/perceiving). These theories of personality types remain prev- alent, often implemented through assessments such as the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, a self-assessment tool that leads individuals to identify their dominant personality characteristics.12 Several other typology theories pertain directly to college-age individuals. For instance, Astin’s Theory of Involvement states that the greater a student’s involve- ment on campus, the more they will persist in their pursuit of academic success, influenced by their satisfaction with the campus environment: in other words, student involvement is directly linked to learning.13 Typology theories and their applications can be useful, especially when advising students about their choice of major or career, but assessments such as the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, although popular, might not be generally applicable to a classroom setting. Rather, it’s wise for instructors to understand the following: 1. Students have many different personality types, which subsequently affect their learning in our classrooms. Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 21 2. Students’ involvement on campus can help them to be more successful in their educational journey. 3. Students bring a number of preexisting cognitive and experiential conditions with them when they come to our classrooms, all of which affect their learning: past academic experience, family dynamics, personal preferences, and much more. 4. The institutional environment, the frequency and quality of our interac- tions with our students, and the character of students’ individual effort will all affect their performance in our classrooms. To be even more concise: These theories tell us that treating all students as though they were the same is mistaken. Just as you and I are different from one another, and both of us are different from our colleagues, our students come to us as indi- viduals, not as a group. High-quality teaching and learning require that we offer the same kind of individual consideration to our students that we would wish for ourselves. Sometimes this includes offering the student additional help or tutor- ing when course content proves difficult, sometimes we need to exercise leniency and compassion, and sometimes the best choice is to stand firm on course poli- cies. Speaking from my own experience, I’ve discovered that erring on the side of empathy is seldom wrong. Person-Environment Theories Person-environment theories consider the relationships that can be identi- fied between the individual and the environment. John Dewey’s Education and Experience (1938)14 remains a seminal work in this field. Dewey proposed that the environment holds a profound and usually unacknowledged influence on the individual, leading to formation of habits that control our behavior and our thinking. Educators who shape the learning environment to encourage student participation increase engagement in the task of learning. Social environments shape human behavior by involving people in purposeful activities that entail specific consequences. Students must learn introspection and self-awareness to recognize the impact of the environment on their thinking and behavior, to eval- uate this influence, and then to gain a measure of control over their thoughts and actions. Dewey was a strong supporter of experiential education, empha- sizing the importance of learning by doing rather than by passive listening. He also proposed that educators must take into account the individual differences between their students, opposing traditional approaches to education in which a defined body of preordained knowledge was conveyed uniformly to all students. Sandeen (1991)15 built upon Dewey’s work, studying the environment of higher education, identifying the sources of influence on college students as including clarity and consistency of objectives; institutional size; curriculum, teaching, and Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 22 evaluation; residence halls; faculty and administration; and friends, groups, and student culture. The structures of higher education continue to operate on a model befitting the Industrial Age rather than the Information Age in which we now live, elo- quently explained by Sir Ken Robinson.16 Consider any large lecture section of a general education course, no matter what academic field: Students sit in an auditorium-style room, all facing a stage with a lectern, where the instructor stands and delivers course content by talking, sometimes assisted by visual aids. Students take notes as quickly as possible, and interaction between students and the instructor is minimal, perhaps limited to 5 minutes at the end of the class period where the instructor acknowledges a few students’ questions. All students complete the same assigned readings, take the same standardized exams, and write the same papers. The traditional classroom is effectively a factory designed to convey knowledge provided by the instructor, ensuring uniformity. Dewey, among theorists for the past 80 years, says that we should question this model of instructional delivery. As Graham Gibbs (2013) reported, More than 700 studies confirmed that lectures are less effective than a wide range of methods for achieving almost every educational goal you can think of. Even for the straightforward objective of transmitting factual informa- tion, they are no better than a host of alternatives, including private read- ing. Moreover, lectures inspire students less than other methods, and lead to less study afterwards.17 We should question, then, why we continue to rely on a method of instruction that has soundly been proven to be less effective than other tools at our disposal. The work of Dewey, Robinson, and Sandeen, among many others, asks us to con- sider our practices as educators more thoughtfully. RELATED THEORIES Two further theoretical models factor significantly into discussions of educational theory. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” (1954)18 remains an influ- ential explanation of human motivation. Maslow proposed that an individual’s needs exist in two categories. Deficiency needs must be satisfied in order of importance, beginning with the most basic physiological needs: hunger, thirst, or other bodily comforts. Next, the need for safety and security must be met, followed by the need to belong and to be loved. Finally, an individual must meet Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 23 their need for esteem: to achieve, to be competent, and to find approval and rec- ognition. Once these deficiencies have been addressed, an individual can act upon growth needs. These include cognitive needs to know, understand, and explore, followed by an aesthetic need for symmetry, order, and beauty. An individual can then move toward self-actualization, or realizing one’s potential, and finally to self-transcendence where the individual is able to connect to something beyond the self and help others to find self-fulfillment. These highest levels result in wis- dom, or the ability to know what to do in virtually any situation. Maslow’s ideas have had a lasting impact on educational theory because they align with universal experiences and common sense, which is why we can eas- ily see their impact on what we do in our classrooms. We know from our own experiences that being physically distressed—hungry, thirsty, exhausted, too hot or too cold, among other things—prevents us from learning or from doing our jobs well. We know that students who don’t feel safe are too anxious to learn. We know that a sense of belonging and the presence of strong caring relationships in our lives help us to be more successful in whatever we choose to do. Every one of the levels of the hierarchy conveys something we’ve experienced ourselves. We should note that Maslow’s work has been criticized as being too simplistic and subjective, with some theorists making a point that a person can become self- actualized even in poverty, danger, or in other conditions that prevent basic needs to be met prior to moving up through the hierarchy. Nevertheless, it is helpful to understand Maslow’s concept in order to think about our students’ needs from a more comprehensive and holistic perspective. Bloom’s Taxonomy Next, Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist who created a well- known and widely accepted structure for classifying levels of knowledge in higher education, partially in response to his observation that university educators relied much more heavily on lecture and student memorization of information than on higher-order cognitive activities. The taxonomy, originally produced in 1956, organized the goals of learning, ranging from the most basic to the most complex: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. This structure has been widely used in education for decades, undergoing revision by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl19 that changed the nouns to verbs, renamed Synthesis as Creating, and reordered the categories slightly. Figure 2.2 shows the current form of the taxonomy. Bloom observed that the majority of university courses featured the lower levels such as recalling facts, while students had fewer opportunities to demon- strate higher-order thinking found in the upper levels of this taxonomy. The low- est levels of knowledge exist at the base of the pyramid, ascending to the highest Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:28:29. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL THEORY 24 levels at the top. Figure 2.3 organizes these terms in the opposite order, with the lowest stages of learning appearing first, then building to the highest levels at the opposite end of the continuum. Bloom’s taxonomy is foundational to the task of writing outcomes and objec- tives for student learning in higher education, so we’ll revisit this topic in the chapters that … 89 Once you’ve written your outcomes and objectives and planned for the methods you’ll use to assess student learning, the next step in course design is to look at the entire body of knowledge you intend to cover over the duration of the class and to break it down into logical units spanning all your class periods. Even though our first inclination might be to let the class evolve organically, disciplining ourselves to make and stick to a sched- ule ensures that we can achieve all our objectives by the end of the course. We can break the task of making a plan for our weekly instruction into two basic steps: (1) create a long-range plan and a (2) determine a day-by-day schedule of instruction, readings, assignments, and assessments. LONG-RANGE PLANNING Your first job is to map out a master plan of instruction for the entire course. The easiest place to start is to create a chart or calendar broken into the number Chapter 5 Planning for Effective InstructionPlanning for Effective InstructionPlanning for Effective Instruction CHAPTER SUMMARY n Long-Range Planning n Modules n Building Your Schedule n Your Turn: Writing Your Assessments, Revisited n Lesson Planning n Scaffolding Instruction n Your Turn: Planning Your Lessons Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 90 of weeks of the course. You can divide the week’s tasks into specific class periods later on, after you’ve decided what you’ll cover. As you create this master plan of instruction, always keep your outcomes and objectives in mind. Remember, if you have an instructional unit on your current syllabus that doesn’t relate to the objectives you’ve written, you’ll either need to omit it or to revise the objectives to include it. A chart such as the one presented in Figure 5.1 is helpful in working through your plans. MODULES One of the best organizational methods involves dividing the course into modules, each ending in an assessment. Minimally, this would include a midterm and a final, as is common across the landscape of higher education. An even better practice would be to create four modules by dividing each half of the semester into two FIGURE 5.1 Semester Planning Grid Week Date Topics and Activities Assignments and Assessments 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 91 separate modules, each ending in an assessment. For example, you could place an assessment for Module 1 at Week 4, an assessment of the content in Module 2 at Week 8 (midterm), an assessment for Module 3 at Week 12, and a final exam at the end of Module 4 in Week 16. Modules can be of any length, from 1 week to multi- week divisions of study. They can build upon one another or can present discrete topics. The midterm and final assessments need not evaluate student learning of the entire half-term—they can measure only those modules with which they’re asso- ciated, if that makes the most sense in your particular course. The point is to build periodic assessment into your course by creating conceptual groupings of instruc- tional content. 1. Consider the entirety of your objectives. 2. Determine an appropriate assessment for each objective. 3. Input these assessments into your long-range plan, creating module groupings. To illustrate this point, let’s return to Design Thinking for Entrepreneurs. This course blends lecture, discussion, and project-based learning. Assessments in this course include several assignments, quizzes, an extensive project, and a final exam. Modules were constructed around these course benchmarks, aligning with the steps of the design thinking process: Module 1: Ideation (Weeks 1–3) n Introduction to design thinking; Virtual crash course in design thinking n Why? How? What? Human-centered design and social entrepreneurship n Wicked problems and systems thinking n Quiz 1—Design Thinking and Wicked Problems Module 2: Innovation (Weeks 4–6) n Problem solving and problem finding n Lateral thinking n Critical and computational thinking n Quiz 2—Strategies for Ideation Module 3: Implementation (Weeks 7–12) n Entrepreneurship n Business modeling n Failure and risk Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 92 n Prototyping and project management n Information for innovators n Funding and regulations n Marketing, branding, and social media n Quiz 3—Business Basics Module 4: Evaluation (Weeks 13–16) n Leadership n Ethics, histories, and social context n Project presentations n Final exam Modules in this course align with the stages of innovation that students will ex- plore in the course. As an instructor, you need to evaluate your own course con- tent to see what works best for you. No concrete rules govern the creation of modules within a course. Rather, these groupings should align with conceptual divisions in your course content and with your planned assessments. If you’re not used to this type of organization, beginning with two modules is a good choice, one ending at midterm and one ending with the final exam. You can always refine your plans later, once you’ve taught the course and see where the natural stopping points arise. Materials Selection, Readings, and Assignments Before you can create a plan of readings and assignments for your students based on the modules and assessments you’ve created, you must select the print mate- rials you’ll use in your course. Textbook publishers abound, and many offer fea- tures such as online resources, pre-made quizzes and exams, and student study guides, among others. Your selection of course texts and supplementary materials such as articles from professional journals, multimedia content, guest lecturers, and even field trips should be governed primarily by your outcomes, objectives, and assessments. If the book, item, or experience you’d like to include in your course doesn’t align with these overarching concepts, you should carefully con- sider whether it is beneficial. If so, you must revise your objectives to align the item with your course. Every course will necessarily utilize different materials, and even parallel sections of the same course at a university may vary in their materials if taught by different instructors. Design Thinking for Entrepreneurs uses excerpts from 10 different texts, published in a course pack. Students are encouraged to read those texts in their entirety, but it would be unfair to burden students Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 93 with both the reading load and the expense of asking them to read that many books in just one semester when the course project takes up the lion’s share of their time. Instructors must approach this topic judiciously, as we’ll discuss shortly. Reading Schedule When planning readings and assignments based on the materials you’ve selected, remember to keep student workloads manageable. Consider the number of pages of required reading very carefully. An average adult can read about 300 words per minute, and typical page is about 250–300 words in length, (both of which can vary widely, of course) for a rough calculation of about 1 page per minute. Does this mean if you assign students 50 pages of reading, it will take about 50 minutes to complete it? Unfortunately, that’s not actually true because we also have to factor in the difficulty of the reading material. If you ask students to read some- thing that’s immediately understandable, like a novel or newspaper article, this might be true, but textbooks or dense academic language will require much more intensive cognitive activity, not to mention the time required for note-taking. This increases the expected time for reading, sometimes double or more what you’d expect. In fact, technical reading rates might even be as low as 50 to 75 words per minute.1 That means 50 pages of technical reading, or 15,000 words (at 300 words per page), could require as much as 5 hours for a struggling student to complete. Even though it might sound too obvious to mention, it’s also a good idea for the instructor to read the same pages as the students each time she teaches the course. A colleague shared a story with me about a summer school literature course she took during her undergraduate studies. As we know, summer school classes generally condense 16 weeks of learning into 8 or fewer weeks of instruc- tion, making for a challenging workload under the best of circumstances. The reading list for this class was quite long, comprised of rather obscure works that were all unfamiliar to the students. At the start of a class period about 2 weeks into the course, the instructor asked the students if they were having trouble keeping up with the readings. Feeling self-conscious, none of them spoke up. The instructor was crestfallen. “Oh,” he sighed, “I was hoping that you were, because I’m having trouble keeping up with them.” With that, all of the students admitted that they, too, found the reading expectations too demanding. This instructor had undoubtedly already read all of these novels when teaching past sections of the course, but by reading along with the students, he shared in his students’ expe- rience and kept the novels’ content fresh in his mind, allowing him to be well prepared for their class discussions. As the result of this discussion, he cut some of the selections from the syllabus, making the remainder of the class a much better learning experience for the students. Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 94 Assignment Schedule Besides scheduling your assigned readings, it’s important to make a reasonable estimate of the amount of time necessary for students to complete each assign- ment, project, or research paper. As a general rule, it ought to take an average student about an hour to write a page of text. For many students, however, this is only the time involved in the actual writing of the page, not in researching source material or creating correct citations or a reference list (if required by the assignment), nor does it include time spend to refine and revise the paper prior to submitting it. Some students write more quickly than others, just as some read more quickly than others. Allowing an hour per page is a reasonable rule of thumb, but you need to bear in mind that individual students may find the task of writing to be much more onerous than others. In fact, some of us (including me) will take 2 or 3 hours per page of text, including research, writing, rewriting, and re-researching until it begins to align with our personal expectations. We usually presume that our undergraduate students should spend 2 to 3 hours working outside of class for each clock hour in the classroom. For an average 3-hour course, therefore, students should be expected to complete about 9 hours of work outside of class. Empathy dictates that we should remember that ours is not the only course in which our students are enrolled. If the average undergraduate student takes 5 courses for a total of 15 credit hours per semester, and if each of those five instructors assigns 9 hours of outside work per week, this expands the student’s workload to 60 hours per week. Furthermore, an opti- mal collegiate experience encompasses co-curricular involvement such as clubs, teams, performing arts groups, and so forth, each of which makes demands on students’ time. Our students can easily face 80-hour workweeks, on top of their social relationships and commitments to paying jobs. None of this ought to prevent us from expecting our students to complete the work we assign. But it does mean that we should take the time to calculate the total hours it’s likely to take our students to read, write, research, or otherwise accomplish the tasks we require each week. If some weeks require more than 9 hours outside of class, trading off with weeks that require less is good practice. It’s also a good idea to keep major events in mind when planning students’ work. Homecoming, Thanksgiving, Spring Break, and other days off are scheduled years in advance and most of us already work these into our plans. However, major sporting events, national conferences being held on campus, and a host of other campuswide happenings can impact even the most carefully planned schedules. If your institution’s most popular sports team is playing a home game against its greatest rival, it’s best to expect that your students will be distracted and to adjust your plans accordingly. We should also be mindful of the monetary costs of projects we ask students to do, if this will require students to acquire supplies off campus, and whether Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 95 they have the ability to do so. These hidden costs can have a significant impact on students’ learning experiences, sometimes even prohibiting them from remaining enrolled in our courses. In Surveying the Landscape, a professor of architecture2 discussed this financial barrier: We require these students to go buy and make stuff. We lose a whole percentage of population when we require them to buy materials. Some don’t have $50 or $1000! I’ve seen some projects cost $1000. And this causes problems in assessment—how to compare a $1000 dollar pro- totype vs a cardboard one that someone couldn’t afford. So this is an exclusive club; this is a real problem. It doesn’t affect retention, but af- fects engagement in first place. I’ve seen students walk in and then leave when seeing what they have to buy. Then we look around and say, ‘Oh, our diversity isn’t there. How do we become more inclusive?’ Well, that cost is a big issue. Your syllabus should include a reasonable estimate of the cost of required materials and a list of sources where students can obtain them. You should also encourage individuals to meet with you if they have problems meeting these expectations. I formerly taught an online course that asked students to purchase the latest edi- tion of the course textbook. Every time I taught the course, panicked students would email me saying they couldn’t afford a $75 book, especially on short no- tice. The newest version of the book was good, to be sure, but in my opinion as the course instructor, any of the prior editions of the book could suffice if nec- essary. I directed these students to Amazon, where used copies of older editions were available for less than $5. I sincerely believe that we should do everything in our power to make our courses accessible and to place the fewest possible burdens on our students. If these costs are unavoidable, we need to make this information known to students well in advance. I know a student who was informed that the cost of tuition and books for the first semester of a community college nursing program would be about $1,900. On the first day of class, however, students were informed that there would be an additional $1,000 program fee and books would cost $500 more than they’d been told to expect. This student was distraught, very nearly having to drop out of the program when faced with nearly double the cost he’d been told to expect. Would we react any differently ourselves? If you wanted to install new carpeting in your home, agreeing to an estimate of $1,900 for the project, but were told on the day of installation that it would actually cost $3,400, you’d be enraged, right? Clearly, education isn’t a commodity like carpeting, but unfair or inaccurate representation of costs and expenses are just as unethical, even if they’re inadvertent. Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 96 Implicit and Explicit Expectations Every instructor holds a set of expectations for students, which commonly involve things like meeting deadlines, classroom civility, correct formatting of written work, and appropriate use of college-level English. These are sometimes published in the syllabus, but many of us believe them to be self-evident. Of course, college students should use college-level English. Obviously, an assignment with a stated due date should be completed by that due date. Whether or not these expectations are made explicit on a syllabus, many instructors simply assume that their students will understand these as conventions of academic life. Problems arise when any of these implicit expectations carries a poten- tially negative impact on students’ grades. Therefore, best practice requires us to include these expectations in our course objectives and proactively provide explicit classroom instruction in these standards. If a student could be penalized for using an incorrect style guide when writing a research paper, such as format- ting the paper in APA when MLA was expected, then the instructor must address this expectation by overtly teaching a lesson about MLA formatting. If a student could lose points for submitting a project after the published deadline, then best practice requires the instructor to first clearly and directly address this require- ment in class, providing a lesson on why meeting deadlines is an important aspect of professional practice in the given academic discipline. We cannot assume our students will automatically understand why we require them to meet our expec- tations unless we deliberately teach them what we want them to do and how to do it. We need to show our students what success looks like and provide them with the tools to actually achieve this success. Many instructors whom I’ve met, whether consciously or not, subscribe to the idea of in loco parentis. That is, they feel it is their duty to take on the role of parent with their students, guiding them toward correct adult behavior. State- ments in defense of late penalties such as, “I need to prepare my students for the real world!” or “In the real world, nobody is going to make exceptions for you,” are common. This belief is incorrect on at least two levels. First, our students are generally at least 18 years old, which legally makes them adults. It is not appropriate to treat them as children. Next, the “real world” does provide some exceptions or exemptions for deadlines. Mortgage payments, for example, are due on the first of the month, but most lenders include a 10-day or 15-day grace period before late penalties are assessed. In cases where no such grace period exists, failure to meet institutional or contractual obligations carries an intrinsic consequence. If we fail to renew our drivers’ licenses or vehicle registrations, we could receive a costly ticket. If we consistently arrive late for work, we’ll receive poor employee reviews or perhaps even face losing our jobs, as is also the case with excessive absenteeism or failure to complete work-related tasks according to schedule. Productivity, punctuality, and professionalism are worthy goals to communicate to our students, but they must also be made explicit in our syllabi, Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 97 present in our course objectives, and the topic of direct instruction that not only explains our classroom requirements but conceptually links them to the type of workplace most of your students will enter upon graduation. As you begin planning for instruction, make sure that you schedule class time for these lessons, including every expectation or requirement that holds the potential to significantly alter a student’s grade. For example, you might decide to include an objective related to professionalism that covers punctuality, use of appropriate professional language, and strict adherence to published deadlines. These expectations should be supported by explanatory material in the course syllabus and written into your grading rubrics, checklists, and assignment direc- tions. We’ll revisit this topic in subsequent chapters, but it should be part of your plans from the very beginning of the process. BUILDING YOUR SCHEDULE Now that we’ve established our baseline expectations for what should be included in our courses, we can turn our attention toward mapping the structure of the course itself. Step 1: The first step in building your schedule is to block out any scheduled time off, such as Thanksgiving or Spring Break. Then input your planned assess- ments for each of the modules you’ve created. Step 2: Next, think back from each assessment to the teaching and instruction that should precede it, filling in the schedule with the specific topics and activities for each week of each module. You’ll need to anticipate: n Lectures, demonstrations, work time, readings, and discussions that must occur before students can complete a project or take a written assessment n The amount of time you feel is reasonable for students to complete a task, such as a creative project or research paper n The number of in-class and out-of-class hours available to deliver requi- site instruction or complete these tasks n Instruction in important classroom policies or assignment expectations This schedule of assignments and assessments is just a skeleton, which you’ll flesh out with additional planning later on. Upon further analysis, you might want to re-order assignments or make any number of other changes depending on your previous experience with the course content or teaching in general. Making a plan for instruction doesn’t mean that it’s set in stone. Every syllabus is a work in progress, subject to continuous development. The point is to exercise your best judgment as you formulate a plan for your instruction, but then to use your professional knowledge and disciplinary expertise to make the plan work, imple- menting changes as necessary. Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 98 Figure 5.2 shows a partial course schedule for Design Thinking for Entrepre- neurs. The grid has been divided into two class periods per week, with the first class of the week designated as a lecture section, and the second class dedicated to discussion and active learning. FIGURE 5.2 Design Thinking for Entrepreneurs—Schedule Excerpt Week Date Topics Assignments MODULE 1—IDEATION 1 Course introduction Introduction to design thinking Read Brown Ch. 2 & 4; Kelly Ch. 4 Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking 2 Why? How? What? Human-centered design and social entrepreneurship Read Brown Ch. 9; Collins; Liedtka et al. Assignment 1: 30 under 30 Discuss relationship between design thinking and social entrepreneurship based on students’ responses to Assignment 1 (due today) 3 Wicked problems and systems thinking Read Cabrera Quiz 1: Design Thinking and Wicked Problems Complete “Draw Toast” activity MODULE 2—INNOVATION 4 Problem solving and problem finding Read Michalko—all Read articles: “Sitting is the New Smoking” and “The Best Chair is No Chair” Assignment 2—The Chair Problem Problem-solving activity Discussion of “the chair problem” 5 Lateral Thinking Assignment 3: Easy Company Tea—a Rube Goldberg Puzzle Discuss student results on “the chair problem” Share Assignment 3, Parts 1 and 2; complete Part 3 in class. Assignment 2 due 6 Critical thinking and computational thinking Assignment 4: Strategies for Ideation Quiz 2: Strategies for Ideation Mackh, B. M. (2018). Higher education by design : Best practices for curricular planning and instruction. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open(http://ebookcentral.proquest.com,_blank) href=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com target=_blank style=cursor: pointer;>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from amridge on 2021-10-10 03:30:10. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 8 . T a yl o r & F ra n ci s G ro u p . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION 99 YOUR TURN: WRITING YOUR ASSESSMENTS, REVISITED Before we move on to developing individual lessons, this might be a good oppor- tunity for you to write the assessments you’ve scheduled. Remember: Every- thing that happens in your classroom should lead directly to student learning, and all learning should be measured. It is your responsibility to ensure that your assessments fairly …