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Course Redesigns at NCSU
Roger Woodard
Two course redesigns
• Ohio State
– Under original N.C.A.T model.
– Funded through Pew grant.
– Buffet approach
• NCSU
– Under the radar
– No special funding
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A question for you.
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ST311
• Introductory Statistics
– 700 students per semester
– Majors from social and biological sciences
– Not for business or engineering
• Sections
– Taught by graduate students
– 10 to 12 per semester
– 65 students per section
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Previous structure
• No formal training
– Mentored by course coordinator in informal way
• Common text but syllabus only loosely
coordinated
– Time on topics varied greatly
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Problems
• Instructors did not know what to emphasize
– Concepts of the material not clear.
– Amount of content varied greatly.
• Amount of work varied greatly
– Students
– Instructors
• Grade distributions varied
• Complaints were heavy
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Redesign
• Goals
– Improve consistency of the course grading and
experience.
– Improve the experience of graduate instructors
teaching the course.
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Improved Experience
• Reduce the amount of time graduate instructors
spend on teaching the course, especially those
elements that are primarily administrative.
• Provide a support network to deal with
teaching and administrative issues.
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Learning Experience
• Teaching should be a learning experience
– Graduate students should be equipped to teach
their own class
– Substantial experience teaching the course
• Time commitment should not be excessive
– Keep workload comparable to other assignments
– Instructors concentrate on the big issues of how to
teach the material
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Learning Experience
• Instructors should make their own lectures
– Not just teach from preset notes or slides
– Let them think more deeply about the material
– Let them find the way to present the material that
works best for them.
• Instructors make up their own midterm exams
– Get the experience of making exams
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Minimize Time for Grad Instructors
• Remove mundane tasks that take a lot of time
• Homework
– Common across sections with same due dates
– WebAssign, online homework system:
Automatically graded, immediate feedback
– Well tested
• Coordinated administrative paperwork
– Equalize size of sections: coordinated add/drop
– Coordinate completion of incompletes
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Minimize Time for Grad Instructors
• Common makeup exams
– Reduction of instructor time
– Online form
• Common final exam
– Reduce time during final exams
– Uniform grading
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How do we know what to teach?
• “What should I teach about _____?”
• “How do I know what is going to be on the
final?”
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Key components
• Detailed learning objectives
– Over 100 task level items
– Spell out exact content for instructors and students.
• Faculty to faculty communication
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Key components
• Coordinated office hours
– 35 hours per week: maximum service for students
– Each instructor and grader does only 3 hours
• Detailed Study guides for students
– Based on learning objectives
– Readings, activities, practice problems
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Training Program
• Initial workshop
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Two days prior to the beginning of the semester
Intensive training
Presentation skills
Course/classroom technology
Overview of the course content
Administrative issues (FERPA, ADA, etc)
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Ongoing training
• Weekly meetings
– Administrative issues (upcoming events,
clarification of policies, etc).
– Just-in-time discussion of upcoming topics
– Content, activities, data sets
• Observation
– Videotaped observation
– Self reflection
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Results
• Overall improvement in evaluations
– Still varies based on instructor talent
• Defendable grade distributions
– Fair!
• Self reported time on task
– Comparable but still varied based on instructor
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Advice
• Address the big problems
• Take small steps
• Communicate
– with the team
– with the students
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Learning Objectives
• Given a study, identify population, sample,
parameter, sampling frame and statistic.
• Given a study, recognize typical forms of biases such
as potential undercoverage, nonresponse, and
response bias.
• Given side-by-side boxplots, contrast key features of
the groups represented by the boxplots.
• Given a study, interpret the results of a test of
significance in context.
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