Index of Project Profiles
Jose Bowen: Art, Music, and Theater
Model: Flexible credit: Fourth-credit option in a large enrollment course
The flexible credit model used by Jose is especially attractive for large lecture courses, especially in the core curriculum. The model acknowledges that any large enrollment course has students with differing levels of motivation and engagement. In this model, more highly motivated students can both earn expanded credit for additional effort and cycle that effort back into the improvement of the course for all students.
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Heidi Elmendorf, Biology
Model: Experiential learning in non-major courses
Specifically in the sciences, the model sheds light on the value of alternatives to the laboratory, particularly in courses for non-science majors. And in this way the model has broad implications – across the CCRP and the College – for expanding the ways faculty might engage students in apprenticeship and problem-based learning experiences as a component to subject instruction at any level, including introductory experiences.
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Jim Sandefur, Mathematics
Model: Getting students to think and communicate as experienced practitioners
For many years Jim Sandefur had observed that students in his junior level "Foundations of Mathematics" had difficulty making the leap from simple to complex problem solving. Using an assessment technique called think-alouds, Kim investigated how to improve students' ability to reason logically about complex mathematical problems, including improving their reading comprehension and communication skills.
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Art, Music, Theater (AMTH)
Model: Developing core competencies across lower division courses
The Department of Art, Music, and Theater hopes to integrate more opportunities for students to develop visual literacy, critical thinking and analysis, and creative understanding across the curriculum.
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Biology: Evaluating Components of the Major for Improving Intellectual Growth and Community
Model: Evaluation and assessment of majors
This project is a good model of how curricular and co-curricular changes can strengthen the major, deepen student learning, and expand flexibility in meeting departmental learning goals. The way the department examined the laboratory as a form of experiential learning, and the senior thesis, proved critical to broader conversations about the capstone experience as a true synthesis of the undergraduate experience.
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East Asian Languages and Cultures
Model: Using interactive technology to accommodate learning in and out of the classroom
The project models the creation of shared materials across multiple sections that have been redesigned as network applications, simultaneously intuitive an sophisticated. The project also models the creation of templates for modules that can take on new content from faculty across courses, even languages.
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English: Expanded Electives and Seminars
Model: Expanded-credit electives based on types of intellectual activity
Of the many ways to expand courses from three to four credits, one of the clearest is to identify the specific intellectual activities that would define the expansion. The English Department explored the question of the four-credit expansion by asking, “What are the kinds of activities not possible now in three-credit courses?”
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German: Redesigning the Major According to Competencies
Model: Establishing department goals and assessment strategies
An idea approach to curriculum design is to identify not only meaningful overall outcomes, but specific competencies, levels of achievement at each phase of the major, and the evidence of that achievement. Although easier to achieve in some fields than others, such a method of rationalizing the entire major according to evidence of learning, along different important competencies, enables both students and faculty to share the criteria for learning and understanding, throughout the major.
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Government Department: Comparative Political Systems
Model: Improving interactive learning in an introductory, large enrollment course
In courses with TAs and multiple discussion sections, online interactivity can be amplified by in-class strategies for generating student questions, student discussion, and group work. Although the large lecture-oriented courses in their basic structure appear to encourage a more passive attitude to learning, they can become important venues for leading students to take a more active role.
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Philosophy
Model: Expanded credit in gateway and seminar courses
The Philosophy implementation is one model by which a department might make use of four-credit courses in the early half of its curriculum to deepen the learning experience of students, with an emphasis on the gateway (and history sequence).
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Psychology - Statistics and the Major
Model: Using digital resources to bridge course experiences
The project models a creative way to make the material for early methods courses more relevant to the authentic work in the field, and support better understanding of the foundational learning.
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Sociology & Anthropology: Starting with the Mission
Model: Backward design for the whole curriculum
“Backward design” is a curriculum design approach that begins with the desired end. Using backward design, faculty and programs first articulate the most important concepts, ideas, and abilities that students are expected to achieve; then they work backwards through the various learning experiences that are necessary to achieve these results. Critical to this process is a shared understanding of these broader goals by the program or department.
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