 So we might as well just start doing, I think most people know each other here, but we might as well just start doing a quick round of introductions to who people are. So if you don't know me, I'm Jason Loxton. I am a instructor in geology and I'm currently a university teaching chair. So this is part of part of my kind of teaching chair duties, whatever the the give back that I'm giving to the university is this reading group. This is the third year. We've been running them all the last year. COVID cut our reading group short. So that's me. Jonah, who are you? Great question, because you probably mostly don't know me. I am, my name is Shana McDonald. I am originally from Cape Breton and I graduated from CBU in communication and English in 2005. And then I went off into the world and did other things and now I'm back, except I'm not, because I'm still just outside of Philadelphia. So I'm teaching. I'm an associate professor in the communication department, communication and languages. Sorry, I got to get used to the fact that it changed since I left. Jeff? Hi, I'm Jeff. I'm a physics prof. I've been at CBU for 15 or 16 years, I think. And very interested in active learning and getting students to introduce themselves to the material outside of class so that I don't lecture and so on. Hi, I'm Terry McDonald. I'm an educational developer in the Center for Teaching and Learning. And I've been, I mean, to my 21st year working at at CBU. Are you really? I did not realize that, Terry. That's an accomplishment. And we should have had Gracie, but she doesn't seem to be here at the moment. So she might join us as well. Patrick Howard from Education is in a fancy meeting right now. And so he's going to pop in later on. But those are our additional two members. And so I kind of did a purposeful invite here to get a group that's small enough that we can have a discussion but also represents a lot of different viewpoints and that so that we can really kind of reflect on things. And again, we're going to expand it in discussion afterwards. So each week we'll do one chapter and we're going to trade off the duties of doing the quick overview of the chapter. So if you guys are not in the group right now and you're just watching this at home, this is the two minutes. If you're only going to take part in two minutes, this two minutes right now is the point at which you could in theory turn off the video and be done for the week. I hope you don't. But if you only have two minutes, this is the two minutes to get. So what we're going to do, I'm going to give you a real quick overview and I made PowerPoint slides because I like doing fancy things. It's just an easy way for me to formulate my own thoughts. So I'm going to put up two slides right now and then I'm going to open it up to anyone who wants to just add any additional stuff. So at this point we're just trying to do a summary. What is the summary of the chapter? I'm going to do my best job to catch what I think the synopsis is. But if you think I missed something, I'll open up the floor and then we're going to actually gage into the discussion after that. So I'll just start off sharing my screen right over here. Jump through to jump through to my screen. And here we go. Okay, so the the chapter is about backwards design, which I think is an awesome idea. And it's basically three guiding questions that everyone should start with from the very beginning of a course or even right now, partway through the course, going forwards, it's still time to do it. So basically it's premise going from the end goal of the course, that where do we want to go? And to know once you know where you want to go, you're going to ask, you know, what are the signposts along the way to know that you're on the right path and that was your assessments, your activities, etc. And then what do you actually need to get there? So what are the resources? How do you structure the course? So essentially doing that hard thinking of really what is the goal of the course going to be, the really big goal, and then structuring the course to meet that goal, right? So what are the enduring outcomes? And we can expand on that idea of an enduring outcome in a second. And then thinking once you know what your outcomes are, what you actually want to get out of the course, how are you going to assess whether you're leading towards that? And what is the structure in the materials you need to actually get students towards this? And all of this is supposed to be aligned. All of this is supposed to be integrated together so that every single component of the course is ultimately leading to that final box that where do you want to go? Those enduring outcomes to take homes that the students have once they leave the class, so they hopefully take with them for the rest of their life. Every component of the course is supposed to be designed through to that. Instead of, you know, the end of the course being an afterthought that you end up in the final week and you go, huh, guess it's over now. Everything is leading towards that final week. So the course design should have that purpose, right? That purpose of getting to those enduring outcomes. But it's important that students are also aware of that purpose as you move through there. If you want them to be engaged and you want them to engage with the material, they have to know where you're going. So basically the advice that the author gives is a series of points here. So start off, if you have a final assessment, start thinking about that final assessment in the first week of the class and potentially even have an assignment of some kind that introduces students to whatever that final assessment is and makes them actually engage with it at every point throughout the course where you've got activities and assignments which are hopefully designed, you know, to get you to that final goal. Explain how they are doing that because it's not always obvious to students, right? So make sure the students are aware of the purpose of what they're doing at every point and consider adding reflective assignments to make sure that they're actually on course with that. So have them reflect upon what they're doing, how they are doing towards meeting those goals. And then finally, since the end goal is to take material away from the class, make sure you close it with some kind of reflective project that actually has students think back on where they came from, where they ended up and what they now know what they're taking away from the course. So that's what I took from this chapter as being the three-minute version of the chapter. So I'm going to go back to being a human being here and just open it up to anyone else who thinks there's something else they want to add to that. Some things I missed that were key. Some things you want to elaborate. Floor is open to whoever wants to talk. Jeff's making, just making moves around there. Jeff, it's yours, man. Go for it. I don't know. I mean, it's a, to me, a fairly standard presentation of just sort of general ideas, of course, design the way I'm used to, right? List your goals, list your objectives, turn your objectives into a plan for assessment. I think, you know, the nice focus of it though is start by thinking about the end point, right? Which I think maybe isn't stressed enough a lot of the time and probably should be stressed more. In particular, I think one of the reasons to stress that what's the end point more is that it may be better for avoiding overloading the course with material. If you start by thinking about the end goals and then just focus on how to get there, you're less likely to end up coming up with a plan goes off in every direction at once, as I'm afraid most courses actually do. I feel like COVID has been absolutely, you know, has forced this realignment. Reading that chapter and just thinking about I think everyone's COVID experience, certainly my own. If we didn't, and that's, I mean, this is, I know you say it's basic instructional design, but it's something, again, we don't get taught. You've thought about these things a lot, not everybody has, right? And so for some people, that's just going to mean epiphany that you start from the end and go forward backwards, right? But yeah, I think it's forced to all of us because so many things are just not possible in the new online world or we just don't have the time or our students don't have the time. It's going through and thinking what's actually important, right? What are make work assignments? What do I really want them to know? Has been, it's caused me to totally rethink all of my syllabi and maybe it has for you. So let's just quickly going around. Anyone else, any, before we have general kind of discussion, anyone else have something they want to add? I think that, you know, that presentation didn't catch in terms of the key points. No? Okay, so I do want to do a discussion, but I want to do an exercise first. And this is a point where we're actually going to pause for a second. And if you're watching the video, you should pause the video and do this. So what I want everyone to do right now is think about that idea of the enduring outcome and just think about one of your courses right now. And we're going to pause for, you know, three minutes, something like that here and just actually sketch out if you have not already what you think the enduring outcomes are for one of your courses. If you haven't articulated that in your own brain, just take takes a three minutes and write that down and we'll just share them. All right. Sorry, can I ask a question? Yeah, I get it. Donna, go for it. I didn't do my homework for lots of reasons that I won't explain right now. And so could you give a, I know you just talked about it, but is there like a quick and tippy definition? Basically what the long-term take-homes of a course are. So thinking about the design of the course, you want to think, you know, what is the purpose of the course? Is it a prereq where they need to understand the anatomy so then they can, you know, work on human beings later on if they're going to be a nurse? Or do they need it, you know, for, is it a job skill? Or are they entering it because it's a practical course where they're trying to be better at X or they're, you know, they're learning a particular software program. So one of the things that at the end of the class, you want them to walk away with in terms of knowledge, skills, etc. Right. And if it's a theoretical course, it could just be a couple of broad methodological things. They forget all the facts, but they understand the methodology of the discipline. It could be something like that. Right. Perfect. So I'm good. Thank you. All right. So let's just take three minutes and do that. All right. Are people more or less ready here? Okay. So we don't all need to share our ideas here. I really just wanted to do this as a reflective exercise as well. If people want, at this point, if someone wants to suggest or to share either what they put down or alternatively why they found it difficult to put things down. If it, if it forced you to confront some things and go, huh, right? Or, you know, maybe there were conflicts you saw between particular things there. So I'll open up the floor. If anyone wants to just, just shout out, volunteer. If it worked great, explain why it worked great. If you had challenges, explain why you had challenges. Go for it. For my, so I'm teaching a performance class right now, performance studies within the communication department. And so what I ended up writing down or thinking about was how at the end of the course, my students will be adept at communicating clearly using their whole bodies. Because that's one of the big goals is that, you know, as communicators, we don't just communicate from the deck up, even though in the academy, that's what we focus on mostly. And so, you know, I am seeing some nice alignment between, you know, warmups, assignments, they're not public, but their performances for the class, the readings that I'm assigning. What I asked myself was, do they know that? And I have something similar to this in my course objectives, and they have those. But I don't know how clearly I've articulated it in a way that, you know, I'm saying like, here's why we're doing things this way, which probably would be useful given that I genuinely ask them to do some pretty strange things over Zoom, like, you know, like getting up and moving around and, you know, making funny noises if they can, and all kinds of things to get them into the practice of using more of our repertoire. So anyway, that's definitely something I'm taking away is how can I make it more transparent and more intentional, not just for me, but for them. Yeah, absolutely. Jeff, are you, you came to your video with it on? Sure. Yeah, I mean, and this is something I've been thinking of for some years. There's been a sort of steady drift in what I conceive of as the main point of my courses, especially my first year courses. So, I mean, you know, these are introductory physics courses. And certainly, if you asked me 15 years ago, you know, what the, what the main takeaways were, I would say, you know, second law, conservation, et cetera. These days, if you ask me that, I'm unlikely to say those things. In fact, these days, the main point of the course, although I haven't rewritten the course goals that I give the students yet that I need to, is nothing to do with physics. I want them to practice independent learning, practice reflecting on their learning and so on, and take that into the rest of their courses. So it's more about, although, you know, the physics is the grist for the mill, right? You want to get them to learn and practice learning? Well, they need something to practice learning on, and so why not physics, right? But for me, these days, the physics actually isn't the point of the course. So, yeah, if I had to list those objectives now, I think that would be much more to do with independent learning, work habits, reflection, right? Learning to reflect on their learning and figure out what they do and don't understand. Terry? I think that's a great example with Jeff is talking about there in terms of where he was and where he is now with the course. And I think a lot of faculty might have difficulty in really determining what is it that my course does, right? But to start this process, and that wasn't really talked about a whole lot in this first chapter, it was just really the focus was on the reverse engineering of your course. But that could be, I think, a stumbling block for some, and I think that's why you're asking us to do this activity, to realize that it's not always super simple, unless you've been doing it for a few years like Jeff has, to determine what is it that my, what is it that this course does? And there's course design, what we're talking about here, but then that in a broader context, there's program design, and not just the course, the program that the course specifically belongs to, but what role does the course play within the university, right? So I think that, and Jeff's getting to that in terms of people who are taking introductory physics courses are coming, they're part of many different, usually part of many different programs. And so that's an important starting place to really sit down, get down to brass tacks, what is it that this course does and what role does it play? What do students walk away with? And I think if people are struggling with that, it's talking to colleagues, talking to their chair, talking to other people who are teaching similar courses or similar courses that do similar things in terms of if you're teaching service courses. So I think that would be something I would hope people would would look at if they were to struggle with this. You, if they took your cue to sit down and reflect in terms of what it is that the students are going to end up with after taking the course, if if they didn't feel satisfied with what they came up with, they can go they could talk to colleagues, they could come to office hours at CTL and just hash it out. And that doesn't need to be the final they don't have to do it all on their own. It could be something that that's their starting point. And then it's seeking input from others to to really make sure that they're they're starting off on the on the right foot there. And once that's secure, working backwards to make sure that students have everything they need to get to that final outcome. I think I think that's a that's a good point. The that you know broader thinking about how does your course fit into the entire program or into the university experience without overwhelming faculty. And I gotta think about everything that the students doing obviously, but but actually thinking about how to especially if it's if it if you're a you know within a a more structured program like engineering or something, how does your how does your particular course contribute to that that broader that broader pathway the students on. I know in geology, we've started doing this in terms of thinking about things like communicating diversity within the discipline. You know, that's that's not a standard take home like understanding what the composition of the earth is, you know, or how plate tectonics works. But you know, understanding things like, you know, how structural and systemic racism has has not only presented barriers to to working in the earth sciences, but also how often the history that we're taught in the earth sciences and the you know, the exemplars we have have been, you know, misrepresented in skewed. So we've started to incorporate those sorts of things, as well as, you know, as big, large term goals along with factual things and theoretical things, understanding the place in society of geology in the earth science that we can do that. I do want to notice one real quick thing, though, but in terms of the, you know, the functionality of why would you do any of this stuff, right? So obviously, ensuring that it's a meaningful experience to students, that they're getting value for money, you need to actually have goals in mind and move towards it. But from a faculty perspective, I just realized in reading this, I've been doing this in the past kind of by accident, which is I like to experiment along with a lot of different weird ways of doing assessments and things. And often students react going, huh, like if you, you know, you break out, so I do two-tier testing, for example. The first time I go through and I explain, okay, so you're going to do the exam, and then you're immediately going to do the exam again. And they go, what? I'm going to do this same exam twice. It sounds horrible. But then explaining to them why this helps, and even actually giving them, giving them references to the literature if they want, of why this thing that actually increases my grading load, my marking load, is in their best interest. And then they love it, right? But getting over that kind of skepticism and reluctance to try new things, explaining what you're doing to students and what the ultimate outcome, the reason why you're doing it, not only does it get way better engaged than I found, but also it makes students way more forgiving because they know you're making an effort, right? And they're way more willing to go with it and try it, even if it doesn't work. And talking to faculty, that's one of the reasons why faculty are often reluctant to try new things, is that fear of falling on your face. And there's a good chance you're going to, right? But if you explain it to students what you're trying to do, even if it doesn't work, they go, huh, well, it was worth a try, right? They get it. So I think that's a really important part of this articulation along the way. Also, another point in the book that she mentioned is that it helps us structure and think about what we're doing as well. So if we're explaining at the beginning, here's this activity, this is what you're supposed to be getting on it. It forces us to think, does this actually contribute it? And as we're writing up that description of this is what it's supposed to do, if we're having to, you know, really put some rhetorical effort into there to try to explain why this is a worthwhile activity, maybe kill that activity. Maybe that activity doesn't need to exist. Maybe just hit delete at that point and save your students some effort or redesign it. All right, well, thank you guys all for coming in. We're going to keep it nice and short each time so that I know everyone's got a lot to do. I'm going to later on this evening, I'll put up a video and I encourage you all to keep the discussion going there. And also, as the semester goes on, if you see people coming in who are starting a month late or starting even later on, I'm going to keep this team open. And so if you see someone jumping in and making a comment two weeks from now, you know, please feel free to hop in as well. And hopefully this is a discussion. We'll keep on going. So thank you guys and we'll see you on Friday.