Teaching & Learning - A Course Redesign that Contributed to Student Success - Magna Publications

Teaching & Learning - A Course Redesign that Contributed to Student Success - Magna Publications:

Check out these 6 principles for designing a course geared towards student success in those introductory courses:

Principle 1: Provide a structure for the course that guides students in their active learning. It doesn't matter what the course, students are responsible for doing the learning. "The instructors are there to provide structure and guidance to help them learn. The lecture session provides an anchor and structure for the course that helps the students focus on the task they need to complete that week." (p.47)


Principle 2: Provide sufficient time on task and enforce deadlines. When students aren't interested or lack motivation, they need a schedule that keeps them on task. In this example that was provided by using the technology to open and close access to assignments, the tutorials and problems could still be accessed by students after they were closed, but students lost points if assignments were not completed on time.


Principle 3: Reward students for their efforts. The new course design lets students retry a homework problem as many times as they like. Instructors have found that when given that option, many students will work as long as it takes to get the right answer, and the right answer counts no matter how many tries it took to solve the problem correctly. Homework scores equaled 1/8 of the final grade in the course. Students quickly discovered that in this course they could improve their grades by working harder.


Principle 4: Provide regular assessment of progress. The online homework and quizzes offered students immediate feedback. The software also keeps an online grade book that students can access at any time. This was not a course where students had to wonder what they're getting. They knew.



Principle 5: Accommodate diverse styles. Some students do work better on their own. In this course they were not required to come to lab. Most students taking the course did benefit from resources provided in the learning center, especially the presence of the instructor and teaching assistants during the regularly scheduled sessions. Still, it is important to be flexible and provide opportunities for students who prefer to work independently.


Principle 6: Stay in touch. Often, students who aren't particularly interested in a course prefer to remain unknown. Unfortunately, that ends up hurting most of them. With this course design, the technology allowed instructors to keep track of students. If an assignment was missed, a quick message noting its absence and including an offer of help was sent out. "The personal attention of the instructor often provides all the motivation a student needs to complete the assignments." (p. 48)