Education Commons^™

It’S All About That Base: Persuading Learners Of Spanish As A Second Language That Verb Acquisition Is The Essence Of Communication, Sean Dwyer

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

The intended result of a series of Spanish courses is the ability to speak fluidly, if not extensively, in Spanish. The quickest way to speak quickly is to learn some set phrases. As a result of strategies that involve this learning tool, perhaps 75% of Americans can parrot “¿Dónde está el baño?” and “Dos cervezas, por favor.” However, a disappointingly high percentage of people who can say those things cannot say anything that would be useful outside a restaurant.

Working backwards from my curricular goal of creating verbal facility in my students, I start by expressing the threshold concept that …

Assessment Project Write-Up: Phil 112, Ethical Question Activity, Michelle Saint

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

I regularly teach Phil 112: Introduction to Moral Issues. This is a 100-level, 3 credit hour course that is intended to introduce students to philosophy in general and the study of ethics in particular. One of the most significant goals I have for the course is getting students to understand how to engage in ethical inquiry. I don’t want them to learn just the content of ethical theories that other people have previously developed; I want them to develop the skills that will permit them to engage in ethical inquiry themselves. The most significant threshold concepts covered in this class …

Reinforcement By Error Analysis Of Multiple: Threshold Concepts In Advanced Spanish Composition, Sean Dwyer

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

This year, I taught a course in advanced Spanish grammar, Spanish 302. This course provided me with an opportunity to build on a procedure I developed and refined in the Backwards by Design writing instruction workshops in 2012 and 2013 for emphasizing one of the threshold concepts in basic Spanish, noun-adjective agreement. This year’s enhanced procedure, which could not be implemented easily at the 100 level, is proving to serve as a gateway to greater understanding on the part of my students of their individual strengths and weaknesses.

Backwards By Design Project Assessment Write-Up, Michelle Saint

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

In Fall 2012, I taught Phil 355: Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. I used this course as an opportunity to test a new pedagogical technique. I will call this pedagogical technique the Incremental Exercises Model (IEM). Below, I will quickly summarize the course and its learning goals. Second, I will explain my previous method of meeting these learning goals. Third, I will explain IEM and how I implemented it in this particular class. Finally, I will provide some concluding observations about the successes and failures of this technique.

Backwards By Design Implementation Report, Kristina Luce

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

As part of my participation in the Backwards by Design Retreat during summer of 2012, I chose to design the first course of the three-part series of courses on writing required for the Art History Major. A/HI 271: Introduction to Writing and Critical Thinking is also a GUR.

My goal overarching goal was to implement the idea of a threshold concept within the course, and during the retreat I identified that concept as:

In academic writing, well-grounded claims are understood to emerge out of evidence, but in art historical writing, as in any interpretive writing, it is essential to understand …

A Process For Engagement With Threshold Concepts In Spanish Composition, Sean Dwyer

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

Numerous practices and assignments discussed at the 2012 Backwards by Design Curriculum Workshop appeal to me as sources of creativity in the classroom. Some will suit courses I teach in the future. For this year, I faced an issue: I am working with students whose classroom vocabulary is equivalent to that of a three-year-old, because I am teaching first-year Spanish.

The most applicable idea, one that energized me greatly, was the identification of threshold concepts. Working backward from that identification, I sought ways to implement practices that would, I hoped, bring those concepts permanently into my students’ approach to writing …