Selene Carter, Health, Physical Education, and Recreation
Course Development Institute: building a framework for learning
Dance history and methods courses
Course revision
Support provided by Campus Instructional Consulting
Instructional Goals
- Bridging the divide between movement and theoretical and historical material.
- Fostering student ownership of material.
Each June, Campus Instructional Consulting and Instructional Consulting at the Kelley School of Business hold their annual Course Development Institute (CDI) at the Kelley School of Business in Bloomington. Facilitated by George Rehrey, Eric Metzler, and Lisa Kurz, the CDI is an intensive summer workshop that meets in the mornings every other day for four days and uses highly interactive processes and activities to guide instructors through the beginning phases of developing a new course or transforming an existing one. At the end of the process, instructors will have determined learning outcomes for their students, outlined a major final assignment that gathers evidence about the achievement of those outcomes, laid out a basic calendar for the course, and aligned assignments with grading strategies that direct students toward desired learning outcomes.
Professor Selene Carter, a dance historian in the HPER’s contemporary dance program, attended the CDI in 2008 and agreed to share her experience here. Originally enrolling in order to prepare for and revise some inherited courses, Professor Carter left refreshed and invigorated thanks to interactions with colleagues from across the university who shared similar concerns about teaching and, she was pleased to discover, form a broad community of support. She also emerged with a new understanding of how students think and how to construct a course that promotes deep, authentic engagement and learning.
The enhanced understanding of cognition and metacognition were particularly important aspects of the CDI for Professor Carter. Tools that build on this knowledge, such as Bloom’s taxonomy, backward course design, modeling, and grading rubrics, have profoundly changed the way she teaches and organizes her courses. They’ve also given her, she believes, a structure through which to channel her enthusiasm for her subject to her students. As a result, she feels more confident as an instructor in bridging the divide between movement—so important in dance—and theoretical and historical material. She also finds herself better able to reach students in the “middle gap”—those who neither fail nor do extremely well—through her introduction of activities and teaching practices that are transparent on her part and foster ownership of material on the part of her students. Her students’ dramatically improved exams and final dance projects have reinforced how effective her new techniques are.
She offered as an example her collaboratively constructed midterm exam. Rather than a traditional exam, which simply checks content memorization, Professor Carter and her students co-created an exam that would test for both content and authentic student engagement and understanding. This new exam both assessed learning in a satisfactory way for Professor Carter and showed few of the usual problems that can plague exams, such as poor writing and a superficial grasp of material.
Professor Carter practiced her new techniques as planned in her fall courses and developed a new course for the spring 2009 semester following CDI principles. As with any new skill, Professor Carter found that she needed this practice in order to get accustomed to teaching in this new way. Students are also acculturated into traditional modes of learning, and need to be nudged into more active and engaged practices. Teaching freshman proved a particular challenge, as these students often have no framework for how to learn in college in the first place. However, as both Professor Carter and her students worked together to create a new classroom experience, everyone got the hang of it. Now, a full year after participating in the CDI, Professor Carter is enjoying her new confidence in the classroom and the results she sees in her students’ work.
