Course Planning (Part2)
Planning written assignments
As you plan your written assignments for next semester, take a tip from the faculty who teach writing. Ask your students to hand in a draft or a section of a major paper a few weeks before the deadline for the final paper. Then spend time making suggestions for improvement and comments throughout. This will force the students to work on the paper earlier and once they see what you want, they will hand in a better final copy. The writing faculty say that the time you spend with the rough drafts will be saved in the correcting of the final paper. Content Coverage
As you plan your courses, ask yourself the following questions about content coverage:
How much content are you expecting the students to learn? Is this reasonable?
Is the content covered in a context that will help the students to learn the material?
Am I assuming that content coverage (by the instructor in a lecture or in the readings)= student learning, mastery?
What can the faculty member do to promote students learning the material?
It is better to thoroughly learn less material, than to superficially learn, but not understand more material.
A quote from a very well respected educators says it very well, "The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage. If you're determined to cover a lot of things, you are guaranteeing that most kids will not understand, because they haven't had time enough to go into depth, to figure out what they requisite understanding, is, and be able to perform that understanding in different situations" (Gardner, 1993)
Consistency in expectations
Are you writing low level objectives, yet expecting high level learning? Or are you writing high level objectives, and only examining for lower level learning? When you develop your materials for a course, be internally consistent. If you are expecting higher levels of learning, then make sure the students see that they will be examined/evaluated in a manner that is consistent with higher level learning. Higher level evaluations might include multiple choice questions involving problem solving based upon a scenario, student reports presentations asking student to graphically or pictorially represent a concept or develop a schema for organizing the major topics of the semester, essay questions, critique primary literature in the field, etc. Many of these techniques can be streamlined in the time required for correcting. The way you present material can also encourage higher level learning. Do you go over all the material, or expect the students to come prepared to class and ask questions? Give the students assignments or projects to do in class that encourage higher level learning.
Rethinking how Objectives are Met
Before you begin actually planning the specifics of your course, take a fresh and critical look at your objective and goals. Ask yourself, are there other ways to meet these objectives than what you have been doing in the past? You might consider how technology might affect the nature and structure of the unit or course itself? These technologies may not have been available a few years ago when the course was first planned. For example, you might move a large part of the dissemination of information out of the classroom activities to self-paced or structured study through the use of mixed media, including print and electronic. This frees up classroom time for discussions, answering questions, exams (and not have to schedule them at 7:30AM), demonstrations, etc.
Making sure your students get the big picture from your class
During the break from the regular routine of classes, take stock of what you are doing and what you are trying to achieve in your classes. Ask yourself the following questions:
What really matters in this class?
What major learning outcomes do you want the students to achieve?
What are you really good at with the students?
Are you doing enough of that with your students?
What do you really want to accomplish with these students?
What are you doing to help your students reach these important goals?
If you find that you are not concentrating on these answers, what can you let go of to help achieve what you really want to achieve?
*Planning Courses to help students become intentional, responsible and enabled learners
A national panel of educators has recommended that college graduates should be intentional, responsible and enable learners.
To meet the goal of an intentional learner, we need to help our students to become integrative thinkers and see connections among disciplines, reflect on their acquired knowledge and their learning to learn skills.
Since responsibility to act as informed citizens is based on values, principles and commitments, we need to help students acquire these values and principles. Responsible citizens are active participants in their society and can see consequences of their own and others' actions and decisions.
Enabled learners can use their knowledge and skills to communicate their ideas, solve complex problems and manage practical situations.
As you review, revise and plan your courses for next semester ask yourself how well or how much are you fostering these skills on our students. This thought process may allow you to incorporate these desirable outcome indicators without making huge changes to your course structure.
*Are your students realizing that learning in your subject should not end when the course does
As the weeks roll on through the semester are your students coming to realize that their learning in your subject should continue after the course ends? What are you doing to help students continue learning when the course in over? Think about trying to do some of the following. Here are a few ideas to foster the idea that learning this discipline can continue after the formal class end:
Are you showing how interesting the subject is and how much you still enjoy learning about it?
Have you made it clear that you will still be accessible to the students as they continue to learn?
Have you fostered intellectual curiosity in this subject matter?
Have you helped students to develop these learning to learn skills in this discipline:
ability to ask good questions in this discipline
knowledge of print, electronic, human resources that are available to them
ability to evaluate the appropriateness of these resources for their continued learning
ability to read the primary or secondary literature on this topic
If we can get our students to achieve this lifelong learning in a subject, we and they will have succeeded.
Setting expectations and welcoming your students
If you are completely changing your course over the way it was taught in previous years, or if you are teaching a brand new course to advance students, you might consider sending these students a letter or email to their homes explaining the course and outlining some of your expectation of the course. You might also want to welcome them into the course and tell them how excited you are that they will be in the course. This letter should only be used in special cases and not for routine courses or course changes. It might work best for the students that you have already taught and have some expectations about what your course will be like.
Source : http://www.usciences.edu/teaching/tips/planning.shtml © 2011 University of the Sciences in Philadelphia • 60
Picture Source : http://pkab.wordpress.com/ 2009/01/29/contoh-peta-konsep/
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