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course design ideas

“I Don’t Like This One Little Bit.” Tales from a Flipped Classroom

The Internet flipped learning before instructors did. Want to find out something? Google it. Wikipedia it. Use your laptop or smartphone or iPad. That’s where the “answers” are. Some of us initially reacted to this cyber-democratization of information asserting, “This isn’t right! The Internet is full of incomplete and simply wrong information.” But the challenge to the classroom was more profound. It has raised questions among students and even administrators about the need for face-to-face classrooms at all, as if correct information and unchallenged “opinions” were all that was needed.

Penne Restad PhD July 22, 2013

Active Learning: Changed Attitudes and Improved Performance

In reviewing the research on active learning in statistics, the authors of the article cited below, who are statistics faculty themselves, found some research in which certain active learning experiences did not produce measurable gains on exam performance. They “suspect the key components of successful active learning approaches are using activities to explain concepts and requiring students to demonstrate that they understand these concepts by having them answer very specific rather than general questions.” (p. 3)

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 9, 2013

An Approach that Decreases Failure Rates in Introductory Courses

This study begins with some pretty bleak facts. It lists other research documenting the failure rates for introductory courses in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics. Some are as high as 85 percent; only two are less than 30 percent. “Failure has grave consequences. In addition to the emotional and financial toll that failing students bear, they may take longer to graduate, leave the STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] disciplines or drop out of school entirely.” (p. 175) The question is whether there might be approaches to teaching these courses (and others at the introductory level) that reduce failure rates without decreasing course rigor.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD September 28, 2012

Eight Lessons about Student Learning and What They Mean for You

A new edition of a classic book on the curriculum suggests eight lessons from the learning literature with implications for course and curriculum planning. Any list like this tends to simplify a lot of complicated research and offer generalizations that apply most, but certainly not all, of the time. Despite these caveats, lists like this are valuable. They give busy faculty a sense of the landscape and offer principles that can guide decision making, in this case about courses and curricula.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD August 30, 2011

The Front Row: A Small Group Feel in a Large Class

Frustrated with the traditional lecture format in an upper-level chemistry class that enrolled more than 100 students, and envious of my teaching assistants who spent time in small recitations working on problem solving with my students, I designed an approach I call the “The Front Row.” It brings a small group feel into a large classroom.

John Allison August 19, 2011

Nine Ways to Customize Learning Experiences

In every course there are certain core concepts and principles that are important for each student to learn, develop into useful knowledge, and apply appropriately. What’s not important is how they learn these core concepts.

Mary Bart August 16, 2010

Course Design and Development Ideas That Work

This 17-page report features proven course design alternatives implemented in courses of varying sizes and disciplines. It’s sure inspire you to rethink how you could change certain components of your courses to build a better learning environment.

Faculty Focus April 1, 2010