Welcome to Step 2: Developing Learning Goals
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Teams keeping project logs should record the following information:
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Teams keeping project logs should record the following information:
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Lesson Topic: Construct Validity
The lesson will focus on the concept of construct validity. Validity is a core concept in psychological measurement and refers to the extent to which a psychological instrument actually measures the qualities or characteristics it is designed to measure. There are several forms of validity and specific techniques to establish the validity of a psychological instrument. Psychology undergraduates need a well developed understanding of validity in order to evaluate the quality of psychological instruments. Students who go on to practice or do research in psychology need a deep understanding of validity in order to evaluate the quality of psychological instruments or develop credible instruments. Moreover, understanding of validity is helpful for being able to evaluate claims made in the media or work settings about human behavior and qualities.
Carmen Wilson teaches the department’s course in psychological measurement. She has observed that a large percentage of students have difficulty with the concept of construct validity. Currently, she teaches validity as a three part model that includes content validity, criterion validity, and construct validity. In general, content validity addresses the question “Do the items on the test adequately represent the domain of all possible items?” Criterion validity addresses the question “Do scores on the test predict something about a person’s behavior, score on some other measure, or some other non-test behavior?” Construct validity, often conceived of as an umbrella concept including the other two types of validity, addresses the question “Does this test measure what it claims to measure?” Construct validity is theory dependent. Given the theory about some construct (i.e. a hypothetical trait such as depression or intelligence), we can make predictions about how people with high or low levels of the construct might behave. For example, given current theory of the biology of depression, we can predict that depressed individuals who take anti-depressant medications will experience lower levels of depressed after 2 to 4 weeks of taking the medications. The logic of construct validity follows the theory. If a test actually measures depression, depressed individuals should receive higher scores on the test before they take medication than they do after they have been taking the medication for 2 to 4 weeks.
Students have had trouble understanding that logic. Another process for examining construct validity is to look at group differences. For example, if a test does a good job of measuring depression, a group of individuals who are diagnosed as depressed should score higher on the test than a group of individuals who are not diagnosed as depressed. When students are asked this question on an exam, many students become confused, and focus on demographic group differences while failing to address the logic of how different groups should score differently on the test. The actual exam question and some examples of student confusion are listed below.
Test question: One of the processes used to examine construct validity is examining group differences. Explain the logic behind this process. (2 pts)Some classic problems:
“The environment in which you are raised in has a huge effect on your performance. Sometime students that have lower socioeconomic status tend to not do as well in academics because it may be due to higher stress levels. Ethnicities also have to same effect sometimes. Your ethnicity may have biological as well as environmental differences. How we are perceived sometime has an effect on how we do in many aspect of society”“The logic behind this is that people are very different from one another. Going from culture to culture or even looking at gender, you can find many things that are different. We need to take this into consideration when working questions on a test because someone may take a question differently than another person.”
We decided that a research lesson on construct validity would be very valuable given that so many students do not understand this important concept.
Learning Goal
The aim of the lesson is to develop students’ understanding of construct validity, and in particular their understanding of the logic behind the evaluation of construct validity. As a result of the lesson students should be able to explain several ways to assess whether a measure has acceptable construct validity, and demonstrate knowledge of the logic behind these methods.
Overarching Purposes
· To develop students’ ability to analyze and evaluate instruments that measure psychological characteristics.
· To develop “informed skepticism” toward popular claims about human characteristics depicted in the media, in work settings and everyday life.
· To appreciate the differences between popular conceptions of human qualities and those based on careful measurement.
Contact: Bill Cerbin
Previous Posts: Step 1 Log
Lesson Topic: Emphasis
The English lesson for College Writing I focuses on emphasis, a significant and pervasive feature of most discourse, but also a rhetorical tool that aids in communicating clearly and effectively. A lesson on emphasis is appropriate at any phase of the writing process, and like other topics in introductory composition courses, it comes across in active reading as well as in writing and revising. Emphasis occurs locally and globally in texts, at the level of the sentence, the subordinate clause, the paragraph, the section, and the whole text.
Writing involves making many interrelated moves over time, often in a recursive manner. Many aspects of writing (e.g. having a complex, arguable, and interesting thesis), even if isolated and clearly defined, are difficult to study given the diffuse nature of composing practice. A writer, for instance, may revise her thesis because she reconsiders her audience, finds a new sense of purpose, discovers something important about her subject, dislikes the sentence structure or wording, receives feedback from her peers, or simply changes her mind. A consideration of emphasis typically leads to considerations of other dimensions of writing such as audience, purpose, organization, development, and style. Although emphasis is complex and has a wide range of application, a single lesson usually focuses on one or two ways to understand and use the concept. We have decided to focus on emphasis with respect to critical reading, particularly the reading of a single text, making it, we hope, easier to determine whether or not our learning goals are being met in the lesson.
Students are often unaware of how to recognize and produce emphasis because they have been taught that writing is a merely matter of following rules and formulas rather than making informed decisions in given situations. The widely taught five-paragraph essay format, for instance, does little to promote an understanding of how or why certain ideas are emphasized. In this format, students typically do less to conceive a focus than to make a relatively bland statement and divide it into arbitrary parts in the body of the essay, putting their most important ideas in predetermined places.
Learning Goal
As a result of the lesson, students should be able to recognize and analyze emphasis as a particular strategy deployed by a writer for specific purposes and audiences.
Overarching Purposes
The lesson has an immediate goal, but it also meshes with the larger goals of the course. Critical reading is one of the four major outcome areas of ENG 110:
Students who complete English 110 with a B/C or better should
· Be able to use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, and thinking
· Understand how to find, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize appropriate sources
· Be able to integrate the idea of other with their own
· Be aware of the relationships among language, knowledge, and power
The lesson can help students improve the clarity of purpose and focus of ideas in their essays. With an understanding of emphasis, students can better integrate sources into their own writing (by helping them recognize the most important elements of a text to be integrated) and indicate to their own readers the most significant elements in the texts they are creating. This lesson encourages students to read critically for a writer’s emphasis, ultimately promoting a deeper understanding of how readers and writers play complementary and alternating roles in discourse communities.
Contact: Mary Helen McMurran
Previous Posts: Step 1 Log
Lesson Topic: Specialization & Exchange
Recently our department decided that the introductory microeconomics course would cover the topic rather than the macroeconomics course. So, while we all had taught the topic at one point in time, there was no standard way of approaching the topic, nor were there specific goals developed for students to learn from the topic. Furthermore, the topic is very timely as it covers issues related to international trade and outsourcing.
What complicates the issue, however, is that traditionally, economists teach the issue of trade as though it is unequivocally a good thing. While most economists will agree with this statement, when the general public considers free trade and all of the outsourcing ugliness, they think that it is associated with mainly negative outcomes. This is the tension we are attempting to disentangle. Our goal is to present the issue of free trade in all of its complexity, with the hope of not only getting students to analyze a complicated issue with multiple perspectives, but also to recognize that while trade may have some adjustment costs in the short run, that it is beneficial in the long run.
The lesson will be divided into two parts:
We discussed the two potential entries into the microeconomics course of the discussion on trade. The first is the production possibilities curve where we can discuss specialization and the division of labor and how, for example it relates to economic growth, or consumption beyond a single country’s (or entity’s) available resources. This also leads to a discussion about self-sufficiency.
Keith uses this opportunity in his course to discuss why, for example Wisconsin produces cheese/corn (whatever) as opposed to, for example Florida producing oranges.
The second entry point is a discussion about demand and supply, but taken to an international level where prices are different with and without trade. This is an interesting entry point because you can get into the way in which governments restrict trade with tariffs, leading to a discussion of winners and losers from trade.
We realized in our discussion, however, that this experiment mainly focuses on the consumption side of trade and would be difficult to motivate any real negative response to the issue. We felt that “real world” issues involving trade (such as outsourcing and the loss of local jobs), is much more messy and complicated. Students would surely understand the big idea from the experiment, but lose the theory when faced with a ‘real’ story such as their dad or neighbor losing his job.
We also had an insight from the discussion that students might understand trade very differently if they think about trade as between states or as between countries. This led to a discussion about how to get students to think about trade in a more ‘real’ way. What will trigger them to drop the theory that they seem to really get, and react on a more personal level?
We decided to supplement that lesson with a more complicated case study on the steel industry in order to get at the deeper issues of free trade.
Learning Goals
At a basic level our goal is to have students understand the mechanics of specialization and trade. They need to understand the gains from trade. At a higher level, our goal is to have students be able to disentangle the complexities of real world trade including all of the costs of adjustments as well as the benefits.
Overarching Purposes
Contact: Lisa Giddings
Previous Log: Step 1
Lesson Topic
The lesson is centered around “The Parasitologist’s Dilemma”. A dilemma facing researchers and health care providers in developing countries is the balance between overpopulation and disease. When an effective treatment for a disease is found, it invariably leads to an increase in population, which in turn decreases the quality of life for that population, and a decrease in environmental quality. The alternative is to let nature run its course and keep populations in check through disease and starvation.
Students are bombarded with messages from 5th grade about how humans have a negative impact on the environment. By the time they reach college and we lecture to them on the topic again, you can literally see their brains shut off. Students in the US are also isolated from many environmental and health issues that are current problems in much of the world. This can lead to the perception that overpopulation is not a problem because nothing bad has happened yet.
Learning Goals
· We want students to discover for themselves that human population and consumption growth have a negative impact on the environment, human health and quality of life.
· Most of the damage to the environment can be traced directly to human overpopulation and overconsumption. We want the students to collect and discuss data relevant to this issue and draw their own conclusions.
· We want students to be able describe how human population levels and consumption impact the environment.
Long-term Qualities
· We want students to be able to collect, analyze and interpret population data.
· We want students to predict how changes in population parameters will influence population pyramids and growth rates.
· We want students to be able to realize that both population and consumption contribute to environmental impact.
Contact: Scott Cooper
Previous Log: Step 1
Our group decided to address the topic of confidence intervals and the interpretation and use of confidence intervals, in particular focusing on the interpretation of confidence intervals (i.e. what intervals say and what they do not say). We chose this topic after having noticed students having difficulty with the interpretation and use of the confidence interval and not so much the computation of the confidence interval.
Learning Goals
By the end of the lesson, students will understand the purpose of a confidence interval, how to calculate a confidence interval and how to interpret a confidence interval correctly in the context of the problem. With the completion of the lesson, we hope to address and prevent common misconceptions and misinterpretations of confidence intervals.
Overarching Purposes
The lesson is building on the basic idea of statistical inference. By the end of the entire course, the hope is that students have acquired an understanding of statistical inference (i.e. making a claim about the population from information collected via a random sample or randomized experiment) and to gain insight into the idea of sampling variability.
Contact: Brooke Fridley
Previous Log: 1
The Philosophy Team has chosen to do two lessons this semester. The first is "Logical Proofs" and the other is "Phenomenological Experience." These two lessons represent important methodologies. The first, "Logical Proofs" is one of the most difficult topics to teach in logic. The second draws attention to the notions of intention, experience and interpretation.
Specific Learning Goals of Lesson--Logic
1. Students will be able to identify the components of a proof.
2. Students will be able to identify strategies for constructing proof.
3. Students will construct first-order propositional proofs.
Long Term Qualities--Logic
1. The students will recognize how logical forms structure ordinary discourse.
2. The students will use logical strategies in order to become better listeners and participants in discussions.
Specific Learning Goals--Phenomenology
1. The students will recognize key vocabulary of a branch of Continental Philosophy.
2. The students will experience the concepts of "intention" and "nothingness".
3. The students will better understand key readings that make use of these notions.
Long Term Qualities--Phenomenology
1. Students will be more aware of how interpretation colors experience.
2. Students will have a conceptual framework for understanding what it may mean to be fully "present."
3. Students will become more compassionate as they realize that all humans share these features.
Contact: Sheri Ross
Previous Log: 1
The lesson will focus on Organizational Culture. This is selected because it is one of the least understood topics by students:
Learning Goals:
• Define the concept of organizational culture.
• Identify and explain composing elements and representations of organizational culture, such as artifacts, values, basic assumptions and illustrate these with examples.
• Identify and illustrate types of cultures, such as clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, market.
• Explain the socialization process as an element of organizational culture.
Long-Term Goals
Prepare them for the real business world. Most often, our graduates indicate that despite all the years of education, school did not prepare them for the realities of the business world, understanding organizational culture is one of the issues that will facilitate the satisfaction and long term success of an individual , a team, or the organization overall.
Contact: Dr. Hulya Julie Yazici
Previous Log: 1
Lesson Topic
Our topic is program evaluation. We choose it because RTH 456/556 is a core foundation course where students learn a program design model to guide the therapeutic recreation process of client and program assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. The Therapeutic Recreation Program is accredited by National Recreation and Park Association/American Association of Leisure and Recreation (NRPA/ AALR) and is therefore required to address the following standards as learning outcomes:
· Ability to formulate, plan for implementation, and evaluate extent to which goals and objectives for the leisure service and for groups and individuals within the service have been met. (Standard 8.27)
· Ability to apply programming concepts, including conceptualization, planning, implementation, and evaluation of comprehensive and specific therapeutic recreation services. (Standard 9D.13)
We recognize the importance of these goals and want to understand if the students are actually learning to "think like an evaluator."
Learning Goals
Terminal Performance Objective 1: The student will demonstrate the ability to use specific evaluation instruments.
Enabling Objective 1: The student will demonstrate knowledge of when to choose a specific type of evaluation instrument.
Performance Measure 1: After reading the STAR Toolkit chapter and reviewing a rationale for choosing a specific type of evaluation instruments, each student will be able to accurately match a data collection instrument with an appropriate method for the program observed 4/27/2005 at least 80% of the time on an in-class worksheet as judged by the instructor and lesson study team members.
Enabling Objective 2: The student will demonstrate the ability to use Stumbo and Peterson’s (2000) Post-Session Analysis Form to evaluate a specific therapeutic recreation program session.
Performance Measure 2: After observing an innovative activity program session in the prior class session, each student will have completed the Post-Session Analysis Form as homework with at least 80% accuracy as measured by inter-rater reliability among all class members as judged by the instructor and lesson study team members.
Enabling Objective 3: To demonstrate the ability to develop an evaluation instrument appropriate to a specific program plan.
Performance Measure 3: After participating in a lecture/discussion of the readings (Project Star Instrument Development Chapter and Stumbo & Peterson [ 2000] Chapter 11) and the previously identified class activities, the students will create 6 evaluation questions for their Specific Program Plans using at least 3 different question types (e.g. yes/no, ratings, checklists, categories, multiple choice) to at least 80% accuracy as judged by the instructor and lesson study team members.
Enabling Objective 4: The student will demonstrate the ability to analyze a program session that has been evaluated using Stumbo & Peterson's (2000) post-session analysis form.
Performance Measure 4: After in-class discussion of completed Post-Session Analysis Forms (Stumbo & Peterson, 2000) from observation of an innovative activity, each student will demonstrate the ability to analyze program results as judged by the instructor and lesson study team by compiling a program evaluation report that includes the following information with at least 80% accuracy:
· Who conducted the analysis?
· Who wrote the report?
· What was evaluated?
· When was it evaluated?
· Where did the event take place?
· How the data was collected & why was that instrument used?
· Any problems or limitations in the data collection or analysis?
· What were the findings of the evaluation?
· What are the conclusions or recommendations?
Long-term Qualities
The long-term qualities we expect this lesson will support revolve around the students
"thinking like an evaluator." In the long-term the students will retain the skills to:
· plan for evaluation
· complete a post-session evaluation form
· develop program evaluation questions
· value the evaluation process in program design and development
Contact: Robin Yaffe Tschumper
Previous Log: 1
NOTE: Please read our full log entry in PDF format.
EXCERPT: The Lesson intends to help students differentiate and explain three statistical terms at the heart of statistical inference.
The specifc learning goals of the lesson are as follows.
1. Students should recognize the difference between statistics (numbers based on a sample) and a parameter (number based on an entire population).
2. Students should be able to explain why sample means are important for inference on a population.
3. Students should be able to define the population mean, using words like "typical/central/mean/expected" value of an entire group of individuals.
Students will practice applying statistical techniques to data collected from samples and experience first hand how sample information can be applied to understand an aspect of a larger population; without samples, this understanding of the population would be practically impossible. This is the central idea of statistics.
Contact: Dan Nordman
Previous Log: 1
Lesson Topic: Conducting Effective Research for Presentations
The Communications & Library Team consists of faculty members from Communication Studies and faculty librarians. The entire group has met three times, and the librarians have met separately several times. The information literacy skills lesson has traditionally been prepared by the librarians with occasional input from individual CST110 instructors. The lesson study process has provided a unique opportunity for us to collaborate fully in the redesign of the information literacy instruction session which will be presented to approximately 40 sections of CST110 students.
Because of the nature of our group, the fact that the librarians have traditionally prepared the lesson and the fact that we are modifying an existing lesson on this topic, an important dynamic in our discussions has been getting better acquainted and establishing a climate of trust for open dialogue about the effectiveness of the existing lesson. In addition, we have come to realize that librarians and CST110 instructors each have a unique vantage point for observing student learning. One of the many benefits of our collaboration has been the opportunity to inform each other about CST110 students’ research behaviors subsequent to the information literacy instruction session.
At our meeting on April 1st librarians presented proposed objectives for the new lesson to be subsumed beneath appropriate CST110 course goals. Following the April 1 meeting, CST 110 instructors contributed further input including written comments and one idea for a proposed assignment that may facilitate learning. Librarians met twice to prepare a proposed outline for a new lesson. One of the goals of the librarians was to place more emphasis on critical thinking about information and present examples of information bias that are more realistic to the types of dilemmas students will face in selecting information.
The outline was presented to CST110 teachers at our meeting on April 29. The piece of the lesson which addresses evaluation of information seems to be on target. A clear message from CST110 instructors at the meeting was that their observations indicate that students don’t have a clear understanding of the research process. They don’t understand the parameters of the tools they are using and the decisions that need to be made in selecting research tools. The library session needs to place more emphasis on a research flow chart, clarifying decision points in the research process. A required assignment, such as a research diary or worksheet could be used to emphasize the process and to assess student understanding.
The librarians will meet again to redesign the lesson. The large group will meet again on May 13th.
The revised goals for the lesson are:
Learning Goals:
CST 110 Course Objective:
Locate sources of information in the library and use it to develop your presentation.
Learning Goals:
1. Understand the organization of information in various formats available via Murphy Library.
2. Understand and use library services that facilitate research for presentations.
3. Select types of information and information databases most appropriate for the presentation.
4. Understand that the research consists of many decision points, requiring continual assessment and refinement of the research process.
5. Recognize elements of citations for a wide range of resources and cite sources appropriately.
CST110 Course Objective:
Evaluate the credibility of evidence used for supporting a speaker’s argument.
Learning Goals:
1. Accurately interpret the purposes and main ideas in information sources and support ideas with credible sources.
2. Evaluate the value and context of sources of information, using techniques such as researching the author, institution or organization to establish credibility and purpose, and locating primary documents.
Overarching Purpose:
The ability to conduct thorough research and select the most credible information is key to effective communication and persuasion in both professional and personal settings. We want to prepare students for a lifetime of communicating effectively and learning continuously, by giving them the skills to retrieve, evaluate and properly credit information.
Contact: Cristine Prucha
Previous Log: 1
Lesson Topic: nineteenth-century imperialism
Lesson will focus on nineteenth-century imperialism. We chose this topic because it is a critical component of the current world order and it is an important piece of context for understanding current human rights struggles.
Specific learning goals:
Long-Term Qualities
Contact: Jodi Vandenbeg-Daves
Previous Log 1
Lesson topic: Capital Budgeting
This topic was selected because of its recognized importance across all forms of economic entities, including for profit and not for profit businesses, government agencies, charities, churches and other NGOs.
It could be said that this topic is the first reality check for students no matter what their future careers or their current major as the topic permeates all aspects of life. To start with we introduce the time value of money (i.e., the compounding of interest) and its effect on the selection and financing of capital projects. We follow this with a discussion of several quantitative methods of evaluating capital budgeting decisions.
Learning goals:
Long term goals:
The targeted outcome of this lesson is to give students quantitative skills in evaluating investment opportunities encountered in their careers. This topic will add value to the students’ portfolio and we encourage them to suggest, and argue for, the utilization of these techniques throughout their career.
Contact: Barbara Eide
Previous Log: 1
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