Effective Course Design Practices that Foster Success with First-Year Students

Effective Course Design Practices that Foster Success with First-Year Students

Phyllis Blumberg Blumberg Educational Consultants

Three evidence-based principles of educational psychology can facilitate effective course design practices that increase learning. These three teaching strategies are:

1. Using organizing schemes that are discipline-specific conceptual frameworks to plan and deliver courses by integrating material and guide teaching (Bransford et al. 2000)

2. Providing temporary and adjustable scaffolding learning support, then fostering greater student independence as the course proceeds (Ambrose et al., 2000)

3. Providing students with frequent, helpful, and timely formative feedback, including peer review, to facilitate learning gains (Felder & Brent 2016)

These evidence-based principles are often underutilized because they are not generally viewed as student success strategies. However, they are especially effective practices for instructors who engage with transitioning students in higher education. In this issue of The Toolbox, we will examine these course design practices and demonstrate how they have been successfully used with college students in general education courses.

Create Organizational Schemes

Discipline-specific conceptual frameworks help experts integrate content and learn new material. Unfortunately, novices lack these conceptual frameworks and tend to have isolated knowledge that does not facilitate new knowledge integration. However, when instructors explicitly teach using organizing schemes, students learn to organize the content and use this knowledge to integrate new learning. Furthermore, when instructors explicitly refer to the organizing schemes throughout the course, students comprehend the big picture (Bransford et al. 2000).

Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and meaningful.

—Dieter Rams, German industrial designer

Organizing schemes can be graphically represented, such as the periodic table of chemical elements with rows and columns identifying the characteristics of each element. Some disciplines have a pithy organizing scheme, such as music is the art form whose medium is sound. Other disciplines have a list of about ten different concepts that integrate 90% of the content in the discipline. For example, an organizing scheme for psychology is individual differences in human behavior.

To develop the organizing schemes, try to summarize the content of the course in as few bullet points as possible or with an easy-to-understand graphic representation. Then, after a few revisions of the list or visual representation, share it with people in other fields and ask them to describe in their own words what they think is the focus of this course. This feedback will help clarify and make the organizing schemes explicit while also eliminating the jargon.

Once instructors finalize their organizing schemes, they plan their course around these schemes. Each scheme can become a unit, or the schemes might be integrated throughout the course. Orient the students to the content by explicitly using these organizing schemes. Few textbooks use organizing schemes. Instead, instructors select appropriate course-level materials from primary, secondary, or famous authors. Finally, ask the students to reflect on the organizing schemes in assessments.

Consider how this example of an organizing scheme changed a History of Theater course. Most theater history courses start with ancient Greece and move forward. This results in students seeing theater history as isolated examples and not seeing how they are connected. Instead, units can be presented by organizing schemes that allow her to transcend time and genres. Her organizing schemes are theater and the state, performance, and spirituality, transnational identities, power and control, and politics of style and form. Students read plays from different periods and playwrights from worldwide in each unit. This allows students to integrate theater types across time, location, and cultural contexts.

Provide Scaffolding Support

Scaffolds provide temporary and adjustable support. Scaffolding support signals to students that instructors can help them learn and succeed where they would not have been able to do so on their own. Instructors should provide several types of scaffolding support as needed and respond to individual student needs for this support throughout the course. Some students may need more scaffolding support than others. This can be done by providing extra resources, assistance during office hours, or recommending tutoring. An essential feature of scaffolding is gradually removing the support to help students acquire independent mastery (Ambrose et al., 2000).

Instructors should provide three types of scaffolding for complex content:

1. Procedural for the process by solving problems while thinking aloud,

2. Conceptual for a content organization using organizing schemes and providing additional resources for students or less complex material as introductions, and

3. Metacognitive for goal setting, planning, organizing, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation.

Textbook publishing companies, especially in STEM, offer online homework monitoring systems that provide immediate feedback on their proficiency in the content and accuracy in solving problems. In addition, such systems offer students assistance in solving the problem if they cannot do so by explaining why alternative answers are wrong and providing resources for students who solved the problems wrong.

Instructors can provide scaffolding support for high-stakes assignments by

» breaking assignments into smaller parts, allowing students to redo parts. Smaller pieces can count toward the assignment’s grade.

» giving students standards to aspire to through providing grading rubrics or annotated model answers from similar assignments

» creating a template for completing an assignment. Provide more detailed templates or questions early, then gradually provide less detailed templates

As an example of how scaffolding led to greater levels of student success, General Chemistry is a difficult gateway course that prevents many students from pursuing careers in the health professions and the sciences. Instructors can provide distinct types of scaffolding to help students succeed in their General Chemistry courses. Students could answer polling questions and see the correct answer during the lectures. Between classes, students could be assigned homework assignments that require them to solve problems and to get assistance if needed using an online homework monitoring system. Other scaffolding occurs in small group problem-solving classes where the students solve challenging chemistry problems. The instructor and teaching assistants provide guidance when needed and individualize how much support is given. The students demonstrate their knowledge of the content and problem-solving skills on exams without scaffolding support.

Leverage Formative Assessments for the Improvement of Learning

Formative assessments allow students to learn from their mistakes before taking highstakes summative evaluations such as finals (Felder & Brent, 2016). Transitioning students want to know how they are doing continuously. Student support and feedback are even more critical with limited or no face-to-face contact with the students. Formative feedback also provides scaffolding support.

There are many straightforward ways of providing students with formative feedback, including:

» providing the answers to polling questions

» allowing students to hand in drafts or small parts of assignments for input but not a grade

» self-assessment of content mastery using online quizzes with explanations of answers provided

» give students standards rubrics in advance and ask them to self-assess on the grading rubric

As an example of informal peer feedback that can promote learning, consider Spanish classes that include students with widely varying levels of Spanish language ability. Students are required to take class notes in Spanish. Then they share their notes with other people in their small group. Together they correct their notes to produce an accurate and complete set of notes. Each set of master class notes made by one group is evaluated by another group using a rubric. These scores can be graded as part of the class participation grade. Students found this notetaking and sharing process improved their proficiency in the content, helped them engage more, and reduced stress. In addition, this collaborative notetaking and sharing process can be used for notes from class discussions, lectures, student presentations, and readings in many disciplines.

As these examples show, instructors do not have to grade everything individually or even look at student products to give formative feedback. By providing non- individualized feedback, such as grading rubrics, students can self-assess, revise their work, or reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Much research supports giving students rubrics in advance of handing in the assignments. Explaining how they will be graded improves student performance.

Conclusion

Using these three practices will increase learning universally across teaching venues. Moreover, applying these evidence-based foundational educational psychology principles has withstood the test of time and will continue to be helpful in the future.

Especially with first-year students, instructors need to intentionally integrate these practices throughout their teaching. Listing how the instructor will use these principles in the course syllabus or the learning management system is not sufficient. Instructors must also be explicit to their students about how and why they are using these principles to foster increased learning (Blumberg, 2019). Instructors must prepare students by explaining how the course will function and how these practices will improve learning. When instructors set proper expectations, they increase student acceptance that this is not busywork. The preparation and setting expectations process needs to be explicit and done repeatedly.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Katelyn Wood, the Theater History instructor, Chemistry instructors Madhu Mahalingam and Elizabetta Fasella, and Spanish instructors Stephanie Knouse, Timothy Gupton, and Laurel Abreu, who model these practices as a way to promote student learning.

References

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works. Jossey-Bass.

Blumberg. P. (2019) Making learning-centered teaching work. Stylus

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experiences, and school. National Academies Press.

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (2016). Teaching and learning in STEM. Jossey-Bass

VOLUME 20 • ISSUE 6 • JUNE 2022