Creating a Disciplinary Commons in
IT using Course Portfolios
Josh Tenenberg
University of Washington, Tacoma
jtenenbg@u.washington.edu
Qi Wang
Tacoma Community College
qwang@tcc.tacoma.ctc.edu
Institute of Technology/CCTC Cojoined meeting
March 11th , 2005
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Disciplinary Commons: Program Objectives
• to document and share knowledge about student
learning on courses in Information Technology (IT) in
two- and four-year institutions in Washington state.
• to improve the quality of teaching in IT within
Washington state by establishing practices for the
scholarship of teaching by making it public, peerreviewed, and amenable for future use and
development by other IT educators
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Disciplinary Commons: Program Structure
• Meetings between ~15 IT faculty from CTC’s and 4year universities in South Puget Sound
initial, full-day, Sept 05
one afternoon/month Oct-May 0506
capstone, full-day, June 06
• Sessions focused on Course Portfolios, peer review
and collaboration
• Each participant completes Course Portfolio, critiques
others’
• Peer observation of one another's classrooms
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An Opportunistic Pilot Study
• Qi Wang (TCC): Faculty Fellowship, winter 2005
• Josh and Qi wrote their own portfolios
- discussed our portfolios as we developed them
Qi: Intro to Programming
Josh: Software Development
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Interaction Patterns
• Our role as peer reviewers was not a matter of
evaluating whether we liked or didn't like the other's
work. Rather, our goal was to give the other person
information that would help them to improve their
teaching and to more clearly convey the characteristics
of the course about which they were writing,
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Interaction Pattern
• Course portfolios are created in a hyperlinked format
and posted on the Internet
• Meet weekly throughout the 10 week term.
- 30 minutes – 2 hours per meeting
- Discussing our own work
“should I link to the syllabus or include excerpts within the portfolio?”
“I think that my students need more time to learn about alternative
representations for encoding algorithms”
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Interaction Pattern
- Discussing the work of the other person.
Comments on material, the purpose and goal of an
assignment.
“Why don't you use consistent language throughout all of the
documents given to students in describing each of the phases
of the software development lifecycle”
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Interaction Pattern
•
WHY questions – most fruitful
• Questions that brought us deeper into the other
person's reasons for designing and enacting their
course in their unique way.
• Questions that highlight the disciplinary nature of
teaching, even, or perhaps particularly, in the
introductory levels.
“Why do you teach flowcharting?”
“Why do you use a guided demonstration to teach levels of
nesting rather than have students work in small groups?”
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Contents of our Portfolios
* Purpose and Audience
* Course Objectives
* Curricular Context
* Course Design
* Course Enactment
* Rationale
* Student Outcomes
* Historical Trajectory and Future Directions
* Acknowledgements
* Bibliography
* Appendices
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Rationale: Teaching as a Design Activity
• The Design Rationale is arguably the most important
part of the portfolio
• This rationale is what Dorst (Understanding Design,
2003) calls “the story behind [the design] ... It is the
justification of the design, which explains why the
design is constructed in just the way it is.”
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Characteristics of Design Problems
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Distribution of Information
Nature of Constraints
Size & Complexity
Component Parts
Interconnectivity of parts
Right & Wrong answers
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•
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Input/Output
Feedback loop
Cost of errors
Independent functioning
Distinction between
specification & delivery
• Temporal separation
The Structure of Design Problem Spaces Vinod Goel and Peter Pirolli. Cognitive
Science 16 (1992) 395-429
(slide from Sally Fincher, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK)
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Rationale: Folk Pedagogies
• The rationale reveals our “folk pedagogies” about
learning, both in general and in the discipline.
“our interactions with others are deeply affected by our
everyday intuitive theories about how other minds work. ...
“Watch ... any teacher ... and you'll be struck by how much
of what they do is steered by notions of ‘what the children's
minds are like and how to help them learn,’ even though
they may not be able to verbalize their pedagogical
principles.” (Bruner, The Culture of Education, 1996)
• Constructing a course portfolio helps one to verbalize
taken-for-granted beliefs about thinking and learning.
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Qi’s Lessons
• Not all students know what and how to learn.
Integrate lessons on navigating the textbooks and breaking large problems
into smaller, manageable subproblems along with the discipline-specific
content.
• Not all of the pair programming that she uses works as
well as she thought.
Although students indicate a preference for those with matching schedules,
there might be a mismatch in learning styles. Instead, she will try to devote
more time for pair programming in the scheduled labs.
• Demonstrating new concept using simpler example may be
beneficial to student’s learning.
- use single level instead of nesting level example to demonstrate
the alternative programming tools.
- have students work in small groups instead of guided demonstration.
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Josh’s Lessons
• Students dedicate significant effort to their project,
and maintain group commitment throughout the term,
though there is a range in the effectiveness with
which the groups work.
• Though students might engage in several of the
software practices while in class session (CRC cards,
unit testing), there is little evidence that students will
transfer these skills beyond the bounds of this course
and into their other courses and their professional
lives.
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Lessons Learned about the “Commons” project
• This project helped us to become considerably more sensitive
to the contextual constraints under which we each work
• We gained increased respect and admiration for one another's
skills and passion for student learning at our partner
institutions.
• Writing a portfolio is considerably aided when done with at
least one peer, particularly in revealing our folk pedagogies
• Our respective courses are at too far a distance from the
interface between our institutions to give sufficient insights
into “the institutional gap” that students have to bridge in
going from the community college to the 4-year university.
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Dissemination
• We will present our work at the SoTL showcase,
April 05, UW Seattle
• We are submitting our paper to CCSCNW for
presentation (Oct 05) and publication
• We might submit a paper to the IS-SoTL conference
in Vancouver, Oct 05.
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Update on “Commons” Project for 2005-06 year
• Hinges on funding (one-course release/year per
participant) and participant commitment
• Josh is funded and committed, subject to final signoff
from CSS program and UWT
• There are tentative commitments from one colleague
at each of PLU and UPS
• Discussions with SBCTC for one-course release for 6
or 7 CTC participants is continuing, and there are
positive indications
• Funding is being sought for 1 or 2 others in CSS to
participate
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