Course Redesign ePortfolio Showcase

The first course in a large-enrollment, two-semester Human Anatomy and Physiology sequence was redesigned in order to achieve two objectives: (1) to increase the number of students who successfully complete the course with a grade of C or better, and (2) to improve mastery of foundational course concepts for all students. The redesign was implemented by recording lectures and posting them online for students to view outside of class. Class time was structured around a mix of active learning activities (clicker questions and small-group problem solving) and mini-lectures to reinforce students' understanding of more difficult topics. The technologies introduced in the redesign – a web-based response system and online videos – supplemented those already integrated into the course (online homework and quizzes). The goal was to provide an array of tools and methodologies to address multiple learning styles and maximize engagement and success in a gateway course for which many students are underprepared.

For this course redesign, I surveyed students about what worked and did not work for them in the online environment for this course. Discussion forums are always a tough area in an online course and students wanted more direction. Students did not like the virtual labs I had used in the Spring '14 course and wanted more hands-on labs. I redesigned components of the course to implement more engaging labs and discussions. I also incorporated aspects of proven course design such as discussion rubrics and LMS exam strategies.

Science education researchers have often noticed a disconnect between the way students view scientific knowledge and learning and the way scientists or science teachers view them. Students often see science as a body of facts to be memorized rather than a way of looking at the world and building new knowledge. Online education can easily reinforce the fact-memorization view if delivery of content is the main emphasis. For this project, I hope to foster a view of science more consistent with that of practicing scientists through (a) explicit discussion of ways of thinking and learning in science,(b) assignments that require students to use and identify scientific thinking skills, and (c) required discussion of course content via small group and whole class blogs.

Science 120 was taught as a pilot course for two years, and 2014-2015 represents the first year that the course has been approved for permanent status in the university catalog. Instructors from Mathematics, Physics, and Biology work together to deliver a curriculum that promotes student engagement and teaches the practice of science, while delivering content in Mathematics, Critical Thinking, Biology and a laboratory experience. The purpose of the redesign is to improve the course and to teach it more efficiently, as we eventually plan to scale up from 60 to 100 students each year.

In the spring of 2010, the Humboldt State University Geospatial Task Force was formed to improve the geospatial curriculum. The group was assigned to develop an effective series of Geospatial courses that would serve students across multiple programs. Multiple areas of redundancy were identified across the different specializations within the geospatial curriculum, including Cartography, Geographic Information Systems, and Remote Sensing. Each of these courses share a similar set of fundamental concepts related to the geospatial sciences. Geospatial Concepts serves as a gateway course for the remainder of the Geospatial Curriculum. The course topics include the history and fundamental concepts common among all the geospatial sciences. In addition, the course covers introductory material and techniques specific to each geospatial discipline that follows. The result is an information-dense course that establishes a strong foundation moving forward. Relieved of the necessity to cover introductory material, subsequent courses have been free to shift upward in content, technique, and application. Since the implementation of Geospatial Concepts as a gateway course, a measurable level of improvement and sophistication in later courses has been observed.

The goal of this redesign was to take a defunct, face-to-face class and put it online...while still getting students to physically explore the natural environment and conduct their own scientific experiments.

GSP 216: Introduction to Remote Sensing is a core course in the geospatial science curriculum at Humboldt State University. There has been an increasing demand for geospatial science courses and capacity is currently limited by the availability of lab space on campus. The goal of this project is to create online content and virtual labs for a fully online, asynchronous version of GSP 216. This project is part of an ultimate goal of creating a fully online suite of geospatial courses at Humboldt State University. A significant amount of the online course material will be open content. This will allow students in the face-to-face course to access the online material as well as students not enrolled in the course. This will benefit all students as they will have constant access to online lessons, activities and learning exercises.

The goal for the course redesigned for future teachers in physical science is to better align the current course lecture and lab with the curriculum using academic technolgy to increase student success by incorporating learning assistants, clickers, online videos, and active learning strategies. In addition, the use of online strategies that require less time to complete and free material should improve student retention and completion of the required course.

The course is an introductory course in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and provides an overview of the anatomy and physiology of the speech mechanism, including how the respiratory system, vocal folds, and orofacial structures interact to produce speech. The course redesign will ideally provide students with foundational problem-solving and critical thinking skills to apply scientific knowledge to determine how breakdowns in the speech mechanism will lead to predictable speech difficulties. The redesign is focused on using leveraging technologies and pedagogical strategies to increase student engagement and greater class time for applied, real-world case studies and problems through the use of clickers, flipping the classroom, and supplemental instruction.

This is a core senior-level course in our curriculum that has a moderate DFW rate. This course redesign is to help reduce the number of students who fail to pass the course with a sufficient grade. The goal with this design of the course is to increase student engagement in class and reduce the learning and achievement gap among the course's diverse group of students. By implementing more of a "flipped" model, include the use of clickers and group games in-class, and implement supplemental conceptual videos, I ultimately hope to increase the learning and performance of students who take this course.

This course is a high demand course that is the primary class offered to fulfill the GE-E1 Lifelong Understanding Category The Whole Person - Physical and Physiological Issues requirement. Currently, the number of sections offered cannot accommodate the number of students that need to enroll. To accommodate such a high volume of students the most promising solution would be to design an online offering for this course. The goal for this project is to solve the issue of facility space to accommodate the number of students that need to enroll in the course while maintaining the quality of instruction.

This course is a bottleneck course at CSU Chico. Three faculty and a student mentor collaborated to redesign curriculum for the class, flipping the instructional design and creating new opportunities for students to learn from each other. Increased student engagement with the content and additional in class activities have contributed to higher success rates, with increased GPA and lower DFW rates.

The redesign of the virtual labs for these courses is crucial in order to 1) decrease the bottleneck in these courses, and 2) increase student success in these lab courses. By adding the virtual labs component, we can incorporate more material with technology, thereby bringing more cutting-edge content into the courses. These courses provide the GE for science required for graduation.