Overview: Part of the redesign of the Math 101 course to be offered online for summer of 2020 was the rewriting of the course’s learning outcomes. One of the main strategies was how to simplify the course goals so that students could better conceptualize the learning that would take place.
Outcomes: Three course objectives were crafted with simplified language and coordinated symbols and colors to indicate what competency students were addressing with specific curriculum throughout the semester.
“Just as the way we perform [teach] changes, so should our sense of “voice.” In our everyday lives we speak differently to diverse audiences. We communicate best by choosing the way of speaking that is informed by the particularity and uniqueness of whom we are speaking to and with.”
bell hooks
As this quote from bell hooks implies, we should be tailoring our messages to the audiences we hope to engage. No place is a mismatch between audience and communication approach more pronounced than the communication of course objectives to students. Often the objectives that are written for a class are done when we draft the learning outcomes using instruments such as Bloom’s Taxonomy. The language used often helps faculty with alignment between assessments and curriculum. However, the terms used could be considered educational jargon that students have difficulty intuiting or parsing for nuanced meaning. Often there is no refining of these objectives by faculty from when objectives/goals are developed to align with assessments: these objectives still contain all of the educational jargon often coming from faculty’s use of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Instead students are given the objectives whole cloth where students are left to try and parse out the difference between “apply”, “generalize”, and “develop”. This project created a set of objectives that students could intuitively understand and be engaged by. In addition, symbols and colors were associated with each course goal that could be used to identify the objectives so that as students move through the curriculum and assessments, they would be able to identify what course goal they were working towards.
Changing one objective from
Make predictions about quantitative situations and check predictions against data in order to determine reasonableness, identify alternatives, and make choices.
to
Make decisions about everyday mathematical issues.
In this way, students should see connections throughout the exercises and assessments in the course.
Objectives for Math 101 were shifted from the following Previous examples to the New ones below.
Previous
Effective Communication
Effectively discuss quantitative information with their peers, both verbally and in written form.
Analyze and use quantitative information to support an argument.
Read and interpret quantitative information from a variety of real-world sources.
Recognize and evaluate quantitative assumptions in printed and digital media.
Effective Citizenship
Analyze and interpret statistics about global issues, particularly in the contexts of social justice, health, and the environment.
Recognize when statistics and graphs in the media are presenting results in a misleading manner.
Demonstrate proficiency in multiple mathematical domains
Interpret mathematical models of social issues and public policy in the form of formulas, graphs, tables, and images, and draw inferences from them.
Utilize percentages, mean, median, percentiles, and absolute vs. relative measures in order to interpret data and make decisions about global issues.
Interpret statistical graphs, such as scatter plots, line graphs, and bar graphs.
Reasoning with probability and expected value.
Mathematical Modeling
Make predictions about quantitative situations and check predictions against data in order to determine reasonableness, identify alternatives, and make choices.
Critically analyze quantitative information and recognize that mathematical and statistical methods have limits.
Recognize the difference between correlation and causation.
Interpret the reasonableness of estimates obtained from interpolation and extrapolation.
Interpret and predict errors associated with prediction.
NEW
Reason through everyday mathematical issues.
Make decisions about everyday mathematical issues.
Communicate about everyday mathematical issues.
Faculty Perspective
The following account is from EDLI Collaborator, Rachael Lund:
Our work with EDLI began in the summer 2020. EDLI was the main reason that our large traditionally in-person course was able to move successfully to an online asynchronous setting. Working with EDLI gave us space to brainstorm and think outside of the typical constraints we face during normal semesters. While the intent of working with EDLI was originally to move the curriculum into the online space and make a good digital learning experience for students to get us through the pandemic, I think as a team we went beyond our original mission. With the help of EDLI, we were able to design a true learning experience for students–meaning I don’t think this is a class student just memorize things to get through. I think we have developed content and assessments that allow for students to tie in their own story/voice to their learning. This started with simplifying the course goals so that the goals are no longer an exhaustive list of math topics. I think this was one of the most important steps we took in changing the culture of the course. Many of the students enrolled in MTH 101 enter the class with high levels of math anxiety (In the United States, it is estimated that a quarter of students attending four-year colleges experience moderate or high levels of math anxiety. And one study found that, for 11% of American university students, the anxiety is severe enough to warrant counseling. – https://hbr.org/2019/10/americans-need-to-get-over-their-fear-of-math). I saw this quote in a presentation by Eric Gaze at the National Numeracy Conference prior to working with EDLI, and it radically changed my thoughts on how the curriculum development in MTH 101 should proceed. If for example, 11% of my 1600 students have anxiety enough to warrant counseling–that is enough that we should definitely make updates to take that into consideration and address the anxiety and feelings my students bring to class from day 1. Removing the long list of math topics in the syllabus that students see on the first day is one great way to tackle that. I feel like our syllabus is much more welcoming now. Students see a short list of digestible topics that relate to their use of numbers/mathematics in everyday life. The new list of objectives also allows us space to update content to include current events. With our old list of topics, we were more “locked in” to certain mathematical ideas. However, with this new list–we can easily bring a topic into the class like gerrymandering or inflation for discussion or just let the flow of the class follow student interest more.
EDLI helped create the icons and the color-coding system associated with each learning objective. Our assessments now begin with a short intro and include the icons with a short description of how this task helps meet certain objectives. I think this has been really helpful on the development side—as we create new content, we start with our objectives and make sure we are supporting the goals of the course. It also is a constant simple reminder to students that the tasks assigned in this course are useful and tied directly to decisions/ideas in real life. I have not received now in the years since working with EDLI any questions from students about “why are we learning this?”
Overall, in addition to the updated learning objectives, working with EDLI helped give validation to some of our ideas. My skill set does not include finding research and or completing research/gathering information from students about changes we have made in the course. I am most grateful for the continuing work with EDLI because I feel that as we make small iterative changes (or big changes like the support program) our 101 team is getting information now that shows that changes had a positive impact or information on new ideas or how to keep improving. I think with EDLI’s support, we have created a teaching team culture of reflective teaching that also includes student feedback/input. I keep saying MTH 101 will never be “done”–and I think that is a good thing. As the current events change and the student needs change and we get more information about our practices, collaboration with EDLI is helping us keep the class from stagnating.
Future plans: Currently there are no additional plans for continuing this work; however, D2L has a new standards tool that could be used to allow students to track their progress along each of the course goals and for the math program to evaluate their curriculum based on those goals
Author/Personnel: by Jun Fu; Stephen Thomas
Partners: Rachael Lund and Math 101
