Course cases

interesting course design cases from higher education

Andy Leger, Anne Godlewska (Queen’s University) (ISSOTL 2012)

Paper This session will present the findings of a research study on a complete course re-design of a large first year class which changed the learning environment and reduced boundaries to allow for more meaningful student engagement and improved student learning.

During the fall semester of the 2010 GPHY 101: Human Geography was taught as a traditional large lecture course of 450 students with three lectures of 50 minutes per week. In the following winter semester of 2011 students in GPHY 101 were offered a hybrid course. In this new offering to 180 students, the lectures that were captured during the fall semester were made available for students to view on-line. Instead of attending actual large lectures, students were required to view the three lectures of 50 minutes per week on their own time prior to attending an interactive class of 60 students for 90 minutes, once per week. In this weekly class with the professor, students were actively engaged in small group problem solving, discussion, debate and other forms of cooperative learning activities.

In the fall semester of the 2011 GPHY 101 was once again offered as a hybrid course to 360 students. Students were once again expected to watch recorded lectures on-line. Instead of weekly sessions for 90 minutes students attended four small group sessions of 60 students for 3 hours each during the course of the semester. Once again in these sessions students were actively engaged in small group problem solving, discussion, debate, presentations and other forms of cooperative learning activities. With support from HEQCO, we assessed the impact of redesigning the structure, delivery and opportunities for engagement within a large class by comparing the traditional course offered in the fall of 2010 to the course offered in the winter of 2011 and the course offered in fall of 2011. This comparison included (1) the level of student engagement in the classroom using CLASSE, (2) students’ approaches to learning using a study process questionnaire, (3) academic performance, (4) students’ perception of their experience in the course through an on-line survey and focus groups after all three course completions.

The findings of this study will demonstrate that is possible to re-think and re-design a large first year course to reduce the boundaries to student engagement and improve students approach to learning. By having students’ access lecture material on-line, this affords the opportunity and reduces the barriers for more interaction, more discussion during face to face class time. It takes advantage of students’ ability to use such technologies and provides flexibility for all students and their diversity of needs and approaches to learning. This new course design very specifically targets the challenges of teaching large classes which are traditionally didactic in nature, making it difficult to achieve meaningful student engagement, and often creating barriers to diverse perspectives and diverse ways of learning. This presentation on the comparison of the three different course offerings will help participants make decisions about such course re-designs and approaches in their own courses.