NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Web-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

Now we'll turn to specifics that involve particular courses that we teach. For the remainder of this newsletter, focus on one course you teach or will be teaching next term. Pick a course which may be providing lesser satisfaction and generating some problems; dealing with this troublesome critter will likely provide benefits. We'll start by drafting the outcomes we want from the course. Flip the page and perform the brief exercise, then resume reading here.

We won't list the same desired outcomes for every course, although there may be some overlap arising from our strongest core values. One outcome we could want for students of a survey course may be a heightened interest that will transfer into lifelong learning. In contrast, inspiration for lifelong learning may not be a goal in courses that prepare students for professional practice. Applied outcomes—ability to pass a specific part of a state licensing exam or ability to use the acquired knowledge in practical ways, while mundane, could actually be more important in some courses.

S. A. Cohen (Educational Researcher, 1987, v. 16, n. 8. pp. 16-20) coined a term, instructional alignment, that is closely allied to development of a teaching system. Cohen's term refers to the degree to which intended outcomes, instructional processes and instructional assessment (testing) match with efforts to produce the outcomes. Cohen found that learning can often be improved by as much as two standard deviations by aligning the objectives with teaching and the evaluation! Further, such alignment demonstrated profound positive effects on what the researchers termed "low aptitude" college students, particularly on their succeeding in difficult tasks that require high level thinking. Cohen concluded that lack of excellence in classrooms was caused, not so much by ineffective teaching, but by a misalignment between what instructors intended to teach, what they actually taught, and what they tested. Misalignment is not the exception in classrooms; it remains common practice.

Alignment is characteristic of a developed teaching system. Our students need to know the instructional outcomes that we intend. Importance of overt disclosure of desired outcomes was recognized more than 35 years ago, yet it is amazing how seldom the needed communication takes place. One of the best places to begin to evaluate the status of communication in our own teaching system is at the syllabus. The syllabus introduces us and our course, and the specific values we have defined through our first three exercises, as well as the objectives we just expressed, should be obvious to a reader of our syllabus. Suppose for instance that we chose to be remembered by a future student as an "ethical" professor, and as "a person who had genuine respect for students." A student reading our syllabus should clearly elucidate that "ethics" and "respect" are two key traits we esteem. A student should be able to list, after reading the syllabus for our subject course, the same three primary course objectives we just expressed on the reverse side of this newsletter. If a reader of our syllabus can't elucidate our core values and course objectives, then we don't even have a system. For now review your own syllabus to see if it conveys your intentions well. If it doesn't, make the needed changes. An acid test is to give your syllabus to a colleague and ask him or her to list, from the reading of it, three key words that reveal teaching traits you value highly, and your three main course objectives.

Finally, it is good to define one or two outcomes that we want for ourselves. Far from being merely selfish, this exercise provides an agenda for growth and renewal which benefits everyone. Without such an agenda, even repeated success will become boring.

Developing a Teaching System: Exercise 4

What outcomes do you want?

© E. B. Nuhfer

1. Consider one course that you teach now or will teach next semester. Draft three phrases that capture the three most important outcomes that you wish for your students from that course.

1. ____________________________________________________________

2. ____________________________________________________________

3. ____________________________________________________________

(Note: Our stated outcomes should not conflict with information given in official documents, such as catalog course descriptions, graduation requirements, or departmental brochures. We should convey our chosen outcomes to students, but if students receive conflicting agendas from the very documents they have been told to use and rely on, confusion and problems will almost certainly result. A noted conflict indicates a need for revision of either an instructor's objectives or of the formal documents.)

2. For the same course, draft two phrases that capture the outcomes you desire for yourself as result of your teaching the course.

1. ____________________________________________________________

2. ____________________________________________________________

3. Get a copy of the syllabus that you now use for this course, and return to finish newsletter on side 1.
 
  

Second TLTR of the Year!- With Lunch RSVP to 64915 or enuhfer@carbon.cudenver.edu Our next Teaching Learning Technology Roundtable (TLTR) will be on Web pages—templates for departmental pages and professional pages for individual faculty. This will be accompanied by brief demos of two competing products, WebCT and CourseInfo that can be used to develop web-based exercises for on-site or distance-learning courses. Come listen and enjoy pizza with all of us. Noon, November 17, (Tuesday.) Exec. Suite 150 at CU-Building 14th & Larimer.