Ed-Tech Mailing List Members,
I am attending a conference on course redesign. Course redesign is being advocated and supported by The National Center for Academic Transformation (http://www.thencat.org). At this point lots of schools have gone through the redesign process. The data supports the use of the process in order to improve student learning and reduce costs. Large enrollment (for the institution) general education (core) undergraduate courses are the focus.
The most common reason to redesign a course is to reduce the percentage of drops, failures, or withdrawals (DFW). So the first step is to gather the statistics for the various general education courses at the institution. (Actually the first step is really to get IRB approval, but that should be no problem since no individual students will be identified.) If there are other goals, they would also be identified and measured. The statistics, along with course enrollment numbers, should indicate which course would most benefit from a redesign.
Then the various players become involved. This includes the department faculty members, administration, support people, other departments if the course is tied in to some other program, and anyone else that needs to buy-in to this effort.
After working with so many redesigns, NCAT has identified five regularly seen redesign models: supplemental, replacement, emporium, fully online, and buffet. These are described in “Improving Learning and Reducing Costs: New Models for Online Learning,” available at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0352.pdf as published in the Educause Review in 2003. To some extent the redesign process consists of choosing one of these models and applying it, given the uniqueness of each institution.
If you are interested in learning about this process, a recommended reading list is available at http://www.thencat.org/Rec_Reading.htm and the readings are not very long.
This morning I attended a two hour session for administrators, with the Provost of Georgia State University and the Interim Vice President for Instruction and Dean of University College, University of Arizona. They talked about the institutional issues and activities. They were both extremely positive about the improvements that they are seeing in learning through this process.
This afternoon I attended a session on Redesigning Math in the University with some very powerful statistics regarding improved DFW numbers at some schools such as Alabama and LSU. Then I attended “The Mathematics Success Project” session, where information was collected from public university systems, rather than individual schools. My bias towards mathematics is based solely on the fact that my graduate work was in mathematics education, and I have taught college statistics.
Tomorrow I will be attending a session on how to get started with course redesign and a session on developing a valid assessment plan.
Next steps?
1. Have UM join The National Center for Academic Transformation.
2. Collect DFW statistics for some of the large enrollment general education courses at UM.
3. Bring Carol Twigg, President of NCAT, or someone else with experience in course redesign, to UM to speak with Deans, Chairs, and faculty members.
4. Based on identified goals, choose a course to redesign.
5. Begin the discussion about the course’s learning issues, teaching issues, alternative models, and experience of other schools.
6. Submit an application for the Colleagues Committed to Redesign (C2R) program, sponsored by FIPSE and run by NCAT. Application must be submitted by January 15, 2009.
7. If accepted, participate in planning events during spring and summer 2009.
8. Implement the redesign pilot in Fall 2009.
9. Evaluate and repeat as needed.
What do you think? Is this something that UM should do? Would you be interested in participating? What could you do to facilitate the process?
Bill Vilberg
