Course Planing (Part 4)

Textbook selection

When you are considering textbooks to use in connection with your courses, first consider what and how the content is taught. If you find several textbooks that are consistent with what you plan to teach, then look at the additional instructional materials that you and the students can use that go along with this textbook. Publishers of large sellers are developing excellent electronic cartridges that have many presentation software for the figures in the book, self-instructional materials, self-assessments, web links, 3rd demonstrations, etc. Some of these cartridges can also get you started with Blackboard very easily.

Consistency of standards across instructors or courses

Students often feel that they have been unfairly treated if they think that their peers had it better with another teacher or if another instructor in the same course was easier. As we have multiple sections of various courses or multiple instructors for a course, we should strive for consistency among instructors within the same course or different sections of a course. Departmental meetings might be an appropriate place to discuss the level of expectation that we want to achieve with our students as well as expected content to be covered. For example, what should the pass cut off point or standard be or how much should a student have to do to pass a course? What is the expected item difficulty that we are striving for? Do we want most of our students to get an item right or only 50%.

These discussions will show how different we are now and what we can do to strive for more consistency. They might even lower the complaints of our students.

*Helping students to feel like they have some control might raise course evaluations

All people, but especially adolescents, like to feel that they have some control over their lives and thus their courses. If you allow students to have some say in determing course policies (such as expected course behavior like attendance, lateness, etc,) they probably will come up with the same rules you would impose, but now they feel they made the rules themselves. Further if you allow them as a group to help you determine deadlines for assignments (within general guidelines), or dates within a week for tests, you might make their lives more manageable.

Students might not resent the deadlines or dates as much if they helped to select them.

Insuring students get the big objectives for the course

About half way through the semester it is a good idea to reflect and take stock on the progress being made in your courses. For each course ask yourself if the students are realizing the overall objectives, not just the day to day content objectives. Are you preparing students for the more advanced courses that follow this course? Are you spending enough time with students or emphasis to help them gain the thinking skills, values, learning to learn skills, etc. that are important for this domain? If you need to make mid-course corrections, you can do so.

*Allowing students a little say over deadlines and getting them to get in the habit of using the Blackboard/Listserv for your course

When you give out your syllabi on the first day of class, tell students that you are willing to take their feedback on the due dates of some or all assignments (within a limited time period), or the actual dates of exams (if you have flexibility) electronically between the first and second class. Then post the relevant feedback questions on your chat room, discussion board or class listserv. Tell students they can only respond electronically until the second class and you might want to limit how many times they can respond to the question.

Asking for feedback and the possibility of making minor changes (based on the voice of the majority) to the schedule helps students to feel part of the decision making in the class and may cut down on complaints or excuses later. Make sure you tell them it is majority rule with your ability to overrule them.

Giving students a very early assignments (and one they might want to do) on Blackboard or other electronic discussion format you will be using insures that they know how to access it, sign in and you might get them in the habit of using this non-class discussion venue frequently. If you find the technology is not working you will know about it very early in the course.

*Time to refresh your course

Before offering a course again, it is time to refresh it. Consider the following:

·         Have you included the recent developments in this discipline?

·         Does your textbook now offer a course pack that has many worthwhile self-instructional and self-assessment activities? You might want to include some of them in your course requirement.

·         Look at what your students really need to know to succeed in more advanced courses or careers that follow from this course and make sure it is emphasized.

·         How are you fostering student learning?

·         What learning activities would help students to master the difficult concepts and skills of the course.

·         Remember you can not continue to add without taking out or reducing emphasis.

Spend time thinking about the courses you are teaching now

Before you get involved with the grading of exams and final papers and before you are thinking about next semester's courses, spend time reflecting and writing about this semester's courses. Go through all of the material you gave students especially the syllabus, assignments, etc. Think about timing - should you have moved things around, emphasized 1 topic more and another less. Were your directions clear or did you have to explain something to many different students? If so, re-read them now and make changes based upon the students' questions. Did your evaluations (exams or projects) meet your expectations and the objectives for the course?

Write your reflections on how to improve or change the course now and put these notes along with the folder and computer files you keep for these courses.

Excellent, free web-based instructional materials available for the sciences and health sciences

I found out about an excellent collection of free, web-based instructional resources in anatomy, on various diseases, organisms, chemical and drugs, analytical, diagnoses and treatment techniques, biological sciences, psychology, physical sciences, and health care. As the collection is continuing to grow, you will need to recheck the site over time. Check http://www.healcentral.org or http://www.healcentral.org/index.jsp

 Let me know if you use anything from this national digital library and how it worked.

*Helping our students to become self-directed learners

As teachers we all know that the subject matter has more content than we can possibly fit into the time available for the course and what makes it worse is that the content is growing daily. How can we solve this problem? One option is that we all could talk faster, but that probably won't do it. A real solution involves the following:

·         Learn how to restrict the content we expect our students to learn and provide the scaffolding to allow for further learning

·         Help our students keep on learning the subject after the course is over.

·         The is the only real chance we have to go beyond the basics with the students.

·         Have to find ways to make this subject interesting and inspiring so they will want to keep on learning

·         Thanks to Dee and Arletta Fink for helping with this tip.

Source :
http://www.usciences.edu/teaching/tips/planning.shtml © 2011 University of the Sciences in Philadelphia • 60
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