Education Commons^™

Actionable Learning For A Living Earth: Backwards By Design 2015-16 Project Report, James Loucky

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

During the summer 2015 “Backwards by Design” working retreat, I explored the intricate pairing of knowledge and action as central to efforts to bridge anthropology and environment. The retreat initiated a focus on “actionable learning” as a threshold concept that would come to underlie my seminar on “Ecocultural Ethics” in Winter 2016.

Postcolonial Critique: A Threshold Concept In Organizational Communication Studies, James Fortney

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

In 2014, I attended the Backwards By Design professional development retreat as a way to enhance my writing instruction in the field of communication studies. The retreat workshops provided an opportunity for me to create and transform one of my courses by envisioning where I wanted to end up and working backwards on how to get there. By giving attention to design, enactment, and result, I was able to re-consider the overall learning goals of the course, with particular attention to the core concepts that potentially hold the power to transform student perception of communication studies. Below, I provide a …

Improving Student Understanding Of Writing Assignment Guidelines And Expectations: Mini-Assessment, Cat Armstrong Soule

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

As a marketing instructor, it has been challenging to find effective techniques to help my students improve their written communication skills. I have found that many students are seriously lacking skill in this area and have little recognition of its importance. Many times students have told me that other instructors “don’t care about the writing” and only grade “on the content.” This oversight could almost be humorous, since a threshold concept in marketing is the importance of effective communication between a brand and its desired audience. My personal dedication to better teaching of these critical skills led me to participate …

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, Summer 2013 Retreat Assessment, Matt Holtmeier

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

At the 2013 TLA retreat, the main task I set for myself was building a new course around the film and television of the Pacific Northwest. The main challenge of this course was how to create a syllabus centered on the media of a ‘region’ rather than a particular concept or genre. The guiding question for developing this course was what aspects of the Pacific Northwest films and television were able to contribute to. Since our retreat was focused on 'threshold concepts,' and this course was primarily focused on content rather than skills (studying media of the region as opposed …

Backwards By Design Assessment Project, Linda Keeler

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

Currently, KIN 321 Sociology of Sport is the only sociocultural class in the kinesiology program and perhaps, one of the only sociology courses that kinesiology students will ever take. It is quite common that a sport sociology course is the first (and unfortunately only) upper class course that forces the students to critically analyze the underpinnings and values of the sport institution in which many are working so hard to promote. Since the class is approached from a conflict theorist approach (i.e., what I like to call the nitpick theory) and often challenges long held beliefs, a key threshold concept …

Using Service-Learning To Teach Threshold Concepts, Helen Morgan Parmett

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

The course I chose to focus on for the Backwards by Design retreat and for this particular study is Communication 244: Advocacy through Media. This course enjoins students to critically consider how media can be used as a tool to advocate for social and political change, and, especially for social justice. Students engage with scholarly and activist literature on theories of media, social change, and advocacy as well as case studies of media makers who intervene in the process of social change. Students’ critical acumen is sharpened through participating in a service-learning project, where students learn how to apply theories …

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 …