Helping Faculty Design Assignment-Centered Courses

Titling and Advertising the Workshop

I never use the term “assignment-centered” in the workshop title because it means little to faculty until the concept has been explained to them. I usually call the workshop “Teaching the Thinking of the Discipline” or “Designing Courses for. . .” or “Getting Students Involved in Learning.” In the title or the workshop description, make clear that in the workshop faculty will design their own courses. Invite participants to bring a current syllabus and key assignments if they have them.

Workshop Step 1: Articulate Participants’ Concerns and Objectives

A study that I and my colleagues recently completed (Walvoord et al., 1997) suggests that faculty members come to workshops with their own goals and concerns strongly in mind. Thus the first step in the workshop is to ask everyone (or, in a large workshop, a sample of participants) to name issues they would most like to see addressed in the workshop. Participants typically mention grading and responding, assignment design, student motivation, handling the paper load, getting good class discussions, etc. I list these on a screen, blackboard, or newsprint sheets so I can continue to refer to them throughout the workshop. Thus I convey that the approach I am about to explain integrates current faculty concerns.

Next, and still without mentioning the word “assignment-centered,” I ask each participant to select one of his/her own courses on which to focus during the workshop. Each participant then lists, in 7 or 8 minutes, the 3-5 things he or she most wants students to be able to do at the end of that course. I urge participants to avoid vague words such as “know” or “understand” and passive voice verbs such as “be exposed to.” I encourage verbs such as “define,” “argue,” “describe,” “analyze,” “solve,”·and “create.”· I show an example of what Breihan wants from his students at the end of his required General Education Western Civilization course for first-year students:

Students should be able to:

• (A) define, describe, and analyze important historical events, people, and concepts

• (B) use this information to formulate arguments in which they state a position, back it with accurate and specific evidence, and answer counterarguments against it.

I give examples from other disciplines. A mathematician may write, “I want my students to solve [certain kinds of] mathematical problems and to be able to explain what they did and why they did it.” Faculty in client-oriented disciplines such as nursing may write, “I want my students to observe clients effectively, to identify problems, and to find reasonable solutions.” Literature faculty will write, “I want my students to analyze literature using the strategies common to literary studies,” or “I want my students to enjoy literature.”

After a 3-minute period when people call out items from their lists, I point out that no one has written, “I want my students to memorize 4,275 facts about my discipline.” Instead, they have listed discipline-specific abilities of what might be called “critical thinking” or “higher order reasoning.” Basic information, concepts, and procedures ARE important, but most faculty want students to USE that basic material for higher-order thinking. This step take 20-40 minutes.

Workshop Step 2: Introduce Methods for Interactive Teaching

The next step is to give participants 3 minutes to list what they believe are the best teaching methods to achieve the learning objectives they have listed earlier. They compare their own lists to my research-based list (see Figure 1).

Workshop Step 3: Acknowledge the Difficulties of Interactive Teaching

Often, faculty members’ initial response to this list is to feel overwhelmed and inadequate. Sometimes, to loosen up the group and to demonstrate that I take their difficulties seriously, I ask each person to write privately on a sheet of scratch paper one reason why it is hard for them to use these strategies. Then I ask them to ball up that paper and throw it across to the other half of the room. This of course results in lots of laughter as balls go awry and I or others must scoop them up and redirect them. Then each person unrolls the ball that she or he has caught and reads it. Typically, people have written, “Class is too large” or “Students expect me to lecture” or “Seats in my classroom are bolted to the floor”or, “don’t have the skills to do this” or my favorite comment of all time, “hate to change.” I make a list of the comments on newsprint and then tape the newsprint to the wall to demonstrate that the workshop will help faculty to deal realistically with these difficulties. Then I refer to them again periodically throughout the workshop. This step takes 15 or 20 minutes. In a workshop of only one day, I may omit it in favor of a 2-minute acknowledgment of some of these difficulties.

Workshop Step 4: Illustrate the “Assignment-Centered” Course

I now call participants’ attention to Item 10 on my list (Figure 1), which suggests the “assignment-centered” course. I give them three reasons for being interested in the concept: (1) research suggests it will enhance student learning; (2) the “assignment-centered” course can integrate other good teaching strategies; and (3) it can help them deal with workload.

FIGURE 1 Best Teaching Methods for Critical Thinking and Higher-Order Reasoning in Higher Education: What the Research Suggests

To lay the groundwork for the assignment-centered course, I present a hypothetical course that is text/lecture/coverage-centered. The hypothetical professor might first begin to think about the course when her department head says, “Jane, will you teach ‘Western Civ’ this fall?” She next checks, or composes, the catalogue description, which tells the content of the course: Western Civilization from 1500 to the end of the Cold War, emphasizing such-and-such themes. Now she lays out the 15 weeks (see Figure 2), saying to herself:

I ask the group, “What is the subject of these sentences?” Answer: “I”. The most common verb? Answer: “will cover.” This teacher is already well launched on the coverage-centered model. Next, she will compose her syllabus. It will go something like this:

FIGURE 2 Text-Lecture-Coverage-Centered Course Skeleton for Western Civilization (1500-present)

“When students first see this syllabus,” I ask the group, “what are they likely to assume will happen in the class?” Answer: “lecture.” Thus the traditional course-planning process and the syllabus that results from it can trap both the faculty member and the students into the text/lecture/coverage-centered model.

Once the teacher has filled in the topics she has to “cover,” she is likely to say to herself,

In this text/lecture/coverage-centered planning process, the tests and papers are added on at the end, and their implied role is to test coverage.

Asked in a workshop what she wants students to be able to do at the end of the course, this faculty member lists goals similar to Breihan’s—that is, she not only wants students to describe events but also to analyze and argue. Will her current exams and term paper likely elicit coherent arguments with full evidence and answers to counter arguments? Participants often volunteer that essay exams may be merely what one teacher called “fact dumps”, Research indicates, I tell participants, that many students view school reading as a collection of discrete facts to be memorized and regurgitated on tests. Further, I remind the group, me students have taken essay exams that were graded in this way: the teacher went through the student’s answer, placing a check mark next to evety fact or idea that would “count” and the student’s score was the total of the check marks. What is the smart person’s way of taking such a test? Someone will say, “fact dump.” Moreover, if the students see the exam question for the first time when they walk into the class and then have 20 minutes or 50 minutes to write a cogent argument, what is likely to come out? I ask participants, “What comes out when you yourself, as a faculty member, pose yourself a task or question for the first time—say for a research proposal or journal article-and write about it for 50 minutes. Is it cogent, tightly argued, thoroughly logical?”

The term paper, too, is likely to be a disappoinment Participants will probably predict that many term papers will be cut-and-paste pastiches of library sources. Schwegler and Shamoon (1982) asked students in a variety of disciplines what they thought a term paper was and how they did one. Students described term papers as gathering and displaying information. Professors, when asked what they thought a term paper should be, responded with verbs like “analyze”, and “argue.” But “I’m not in the habit of developing arguments,” said a student I interviewed in a Western Civ course. “In high school we took the answers straight from the book.” A lecture-based class with a term paper tacked onto the end is not likely to elicit cogent arguments from that student.

In contrast, what would an “assignment-centered” course look like, and how might it help to address the problems we have noted? The assignment-centered course begins by stating not what the teacher must cover, but what the students will be asked to do. Then insert the major tests and assignments in the week in which they are due. (I define “major” as those tests and assignments on which the majority of the student’s grade will be calculated, and on which the teacher would stake his or her reputation for achieving the most important learning in the course). At this stage, don’t list all the smaller, preparatory tests, quizzes, and so on. Faculty need to see the course in its bare-bones outline, with just the major tests and assignments. Then the teacher can ask, “Are my major assignments and tests likely to elicit the kind of learning I most want?” As an example, I use an assignment-centered course skeleton composed by John Breihan (see Figure 3). You might use your own example. Here is Breihan’s explanation of his assignment-centered course.

Workshop Step 5: Participants Construct Course Skeletons

-Barbara Walvoord

After reviewing Breihan’s course skeleton, which takes 15-30 minutes, I show several other course skeletons from various disciplines (included on our website), and participants discuss: (1) whether the major tests and assignments are best structured so as to elicit the kind of learning the teacher most wants and (2) whether the number and distribution of major tests and assignments are sustainable in terms of workload. When such problems are pointed out, I ask participants insmall groups to generate suggestions for improvement in the course. This takes 15-30 minutes.

Next, I ask participants to work alone or with others for 20-30 minutes on constructing their own course skeletons and posing the two questions. I remind them that the skeleton should contain only the major, graded tests and assignments, not every smaller assignment or quiz. I keep myself available for consultation.

Workshop Step 6: How to Help Students Learn What They Need for Their Tests and Assignments

When we reconvene, I make the point that in the assignment-centered model the whole course is planned to give students the knowledge and skills they need if they are to do well on the major tests and assignments.

To illustrate, I put Breihan’s course skeleton (see Figure 3) back on the screen and ask whether, according to the research we have reviewed earlier in the workshop, lecturing each class day is the best way to prepare students to write the first argumentative essay in week 6. The answer is “no.” Well then, what IS the best method? I tell faculty that they should not just pick teaching strategies at random from my list (see Figure 1), nor should they seize every neat idea they hear—” oh, yeah, let’s do journals.” Rather, they need to construct interactive learning strategies from a clear idea of what THEIR students MOST NEED TO LEARN in order to do well on the major tests and assignments.

To illustrate how a teacher can plan interactive learning strategies, I return to Breihan’s case. His planning begins by examining his central assignments and tests. As an example, I show participants this short summary of an argumentative essay assignment that Breihan’s students write in week 6, for his first unit, on The Age of Reason/French Revolution.

I ask participants to suggest what first-year students at THEIR institutions would need to learn if they were to write a successful answer. Typically, faculty mention things like “facts about Louis’ reign” and “understanding how to find and structure counterarguments.” (Breihan’s own list is on our website, and in Walvoord and Anderson, in-press.) Then I give participants 7-10 minutes to look at the first assignment or test from their own course skeleton and to generate a similar list.

Then, working from the list that participants made for Breihan’s Burke/Paine/Louis assignment, I ask participants in small groups, in 10 minutes, to generate ideas about what Breihan could do during the first six weeks to help his students learn what they need to know.

As we share these ideas in the larger group, the issue of content coverage is sure to come up. Faculty will say that students can’t do well on this assignment unless they know a lot about Louis, his era, and the philosophies of Burke and Paine. How can one cover all this and still have time for interactive discussion in class? Faculty in scientific and technical fields are sure to say that their courses are much different from history, where one can discuss and argue. Their students are preparing for board exams, for medical school, for chem 102, and they need to cover all the required material. Also, faculty will be worried that students are not prepared for class discussion or that interactive teaching wastes time.

Workshop Step 7: A Model for Planning Time

These concerns provide a bridge for introducing my model for thinking about in-class and out-of-class times (see Figure 4). Unless faculty have such a model, concerns about “coverage” are likely to undermine their assignment-centered course planning and slide them back into the content/lecture/coverage mode.

With Figure 4 on the screen, I explain that, in the traditional lecture/text/coverage model, the teacher lectures the material in the class, and she/he mode1s the thought processes students should follow. But the students are left on their own to do the hardest processes—solve the homework problems, draw inferences from data, study for the test, write the paper. The class time is used only to administer the test or to hand in the assignments with which students have struggled in their study time. Then the teacher spends enormous amounts of his or her own time writing responses to this work, trying, without the benefit of face-to-face interaction, to help the student improve his or her higher-order reasoning, analysis, argument, or critique. Teachers wish they could engage in more interactive processing with their students but because students often arrive in class unprepared, and thus unable to conduct useful discussion, the teacher is forced to lecture what we call “first-exposure”material which is new to the students.

In the interactive model, all this changes. The students are expected to use their study time for “first exposure.” They must read, view tapes, conduct observations and so on, and then prepare writings, graphs, problem solutions, or other work that forces them to wrestle with the material. Then the class is used to help them with the hardest part—the process. Because a great deal of response to students’ work now happens in the class-time itself, the teacher need not spend large amounts of out-of-class time responding to that class-preparatory work. (The teacher, of course, will want to respond outside of class to some kinds of student work.)

Workshop Step 8: Case Studies of How Faculty Use Time in Various Disciplines

To illustrate how this model for use of time would work in an actual situation, you may want to use cases from your own faculty or Breihan’s case, below. If you use Breihan’s case, call participants’ attention to his course skeleton (Figure 3), his first argumentative essay assignment on Burke/Paine/Louis, and the earlier participant-generated list of what Breihan’s students would have to learn if they were to write good argumentative essays in week 6.

FIGURE 4 A Comparison of the Use of Teacher Time and Student “Study” Time in Traditional Lecture and in Interactive Teaching

Workshop Step 10: Participants Plan Their Own Use of Times and Spaces for Learning

-Barbara Walvoord

Once participants have read and discussed Breihan’s (or your own) case, you will probably want to include illustrations from different disciplines. For example, I often briefly describe the method of a physics professor with whom I have worked. Previously, he was spending most of his in-class time explaining and illustrating the principles and concepts of physics and demonstrating problem-solving. Because this was “first exposure” material to the students, they were primarily just struggling to write it all down; they didn’t have time to formulate questions. Or they were timid about asking questions, or they thought they undetstood what he was saying. So, although he frequently asked, “Are there any questions?” he seldom got much response. Outside of class, he assigned homework problems. As students began the problems at home at 2 a.m., they found out they hadn’t fully undetstood the material after all. NOW they had questions, but the professor was unavailable to them for this hardest part of the course-applying the principles to solve problems. In a faculty workshop, he wondered aloud how he might get out of lecturing first-exposure material and help his students in class with the hardest part. Participants asked, “Could you give students a study guide and make them read the book, like Breihan, the historian, does?” “No,” said the physicist, “my students can’t read the book and then solve the problems, even with a study guide. They need to see concepts illustrated and demonstrated in real time, and they need to see the process of problem-solving worked out step by step, as I talk through why I did this step and then why I did the next step.” But there was a way to move the first-exposure out of the classroom: The professor had himself video-taped demonstrating physics principles and problems, and he required the students to see the videotape before they came to class. He might also have used available materials on CD-ROM or on the web. Then, in the class, students gathered in groups of 3 to do the homework problems. The faculty member sacrificed the chance for any interaction during the lecture, but he gained the opportunity for students to replay the taped lecture and to see the tape at a time when they were alert and ready. If he used interactive computer programs, students could make choices and get feedback throughout the demonstration.

FIGURE 6 A Sample “Exercise” from Breihan’s Class

What the physicist gained was the ability to help his students in class with the hardest part—the solving of problems. In groups, they taught each other. If the whole group was stuck, they raised their hands, and the professor came over to help them. He had completely reversed his use of class time, moving first exposure to student study time and the hard part—applying the principles—to in-class time.

Having illustrated how faculty in various disciplines use the model to plan their use of times, you can now ask participants to work on their own course plans. Ask them to return to their list of what their students would need to learn in order to do well on their own first assignment, test, or exam from their course skeleton. Ask them also to return to the list of best methods for enhancing higher-order reasoning (see Figure 1). Keep before them the list of methods that were generated for Breihan’s class. If time permits, it’s very useful here to spend even more time suggesting possible interactive teaching strategies, so people work with the largest possible repertoire of ideas. You might show videos which demonstrate interactive teaching (e.g., Walvoord & Williams, 1996). You might have participants, in disciplinary groups, generate wide-ranging lists of teaching strategies that are alternatives to lecture, and discuss the strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics of each method (Bean, 1996, Bonwell & Eison, 1991, Brown & Ellison, 1995, and Kurfiss, 1988, are useful).

Then ask faculty to begin laying out their own individual plans for using in-class and out-of-class time in the weeks before their first exam or assignment is due. They might use Breihan’s plan as a model (see Figure 5). Refer back to the list of difficulties from the balled-up sheets and tell them it’s okay to modify the model to deal realistically with the constraints of their own situations. In this planning they may work together or alone. I keep myself available for consultation.

Workshop Step 11: Address Logistics, Teaching Strategies, and Problematic Issues

If the workshop length is one day or less, you may only have time to give participants a half hour or so to work on their plans, then 20 minutes to share their ideas with a colleague in pairs, and then you’ll have to send them on their way. They’ll still have lots of questions: How do I do this in large classes? How do I manage students collaborative groups? How do I work with students who speak English as a second language? How do I handle plagiarism? How do I establish criteria for grading? How do I get a reluctant class involved? These might be handled with a bibliography on these various issues or with follow-up brown bag lunches.

If the workshop is 2-3 days long, you can give participants longer for the initial work on their course plans, say an hour or two, or overnight, or a half day. Ask them to return with a roughed-out plan and with questions they’d like to see discussed in the group. Keep the list of initial concerns and the list of difficulties from the balled-up papers available for their reference.

In a longer workshop, you can also address faculty questions. I ask faculty to call out their questions and I list them on the screen or board. Then I conduct a straw vote to decide which topics we will discuss. Each person may vote for two of the issues on the list. Issues with the highest vote are then scheduled into the remaining workshop time. So, for example, we might spend an hour or two on how to guide collaborative student groups or on how to establish criteria for grading. An alternative is to get a small group working on each question and have the small groups report their best ideas to the larger group.

An alternative plan is to have participants convene in discipline-based groups with facilitators you have chosen—skilled teachers from those disciplines. In the discipline-based groups, people share the nitty-gritty of applying these principles and models in their own disciplines.

Workshop Step 12: Plan for Follow-Up

Because this workshop is helping faculty to shape a PROCESS, follow-up is very important. One way I do this is to invite participants to join a group of 3-4 people who agree to meet several times during the ensuing semester to share how their course plans are developing and what is happening as they implement those plans.