I. Instructional Context and Pedagogical Approach Insert a description of your course and how it is taught. Include number of times you’ve taught it, typical enrollment, and other characteristics of the learning context (online, hybrid, clinical, one of many sections, etc.). PHR2367 is a 2 nd year writing GE undergraduate course on drug use in American culture that has a continuous demand for more offerings. Our instructional team has evolved from a single instructor teaching an in-person section at its creation to ten teaching faculty with 5-6 sections of in-person and online asynchronous formats each semester. Despite the extensive number of offerings for the course, PHR2367 section are always filled to 40 students each along with extensive waitlisting each semester; the PHR2367 teaching team is constantly hiring new faculty to meet the demand for more sections. This development in the course offering has prompted the need to design a master course that can be standardized and ease the transition for new teaching faculty starting the course. What area(s) of improvement have you targeted for instructional redesign? This is often referred to as a “teaching problem.” What brought this “problem” to your attention? What motivated you to address this “problem”? Have you tried to address this “problem” in the past? While working to develop a standard course that can be easily picked up by newly hired teaching faculty, the instructional redesign team identified three primary areas for course improvement: 1. We observed that most argumentative final research papers were superficial in their arguments and rarely ever provided counterarguments to common objections against their thesis. We sought to develop an assessment that would better engage students in counterargument writing. 2. As the topic of drug use in America has evolved from the start of Colorado’s marijuana legalization to Ohio’s opioid crisis, Oregon’s all-drug legalization, and a federal marijuana legalization bill passing Congress, we recognized students are less interested in marijuana than previously and demanding more content on the opioid crisis and psychedelics. 3. The hectic schedules of pre-professional/working students have increased demand for online courses with 6-week offerings. The COVID-19 pandemic had furthered the demand for a 6-week alternative for students that contracted COVID-19 early on during the semester. Identify student learning outcomes connected with this “problem” or enhancement. How do you typically evaluate student achievement of these learning outcomes? (Note that enhancing student experience of the course is an appropriate rationale for redesigning instruction.) The first area for improvement relating to superficial argumentative writing directly contracted the 2 nd year writing GE outcomes for expressing ideas effectively and applying communication skills to challenges of the discipline. These are typically evaluated in a short writing assignment or graded discussion board in addition to the final research paper. Student satisfaction in the course content and variety of offerings broadly contribute to student engagement in the course and are evaluated through the SEIs or an additional exit survey. II. Development and Planning In this section, describe the pathway you have identified to assist you with this instructional redesign. Several are designated, including endorsements, CDI’s, etc. It is valid to work with a team of colleagues
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I. Instructional Context and Pedagogical Approach Insert a description of your course and how it is taught. Include number of times you’ve taught it, typical enrollment, and other characteristics of the learning context (online, hybrid, clinical, one of many sections, etc.). PHR2367 is a 2nd year writing GE undergraduate course on drug use in American culture that has a continuous demand for more offerings. Our instructional team has evolved from a single instructor teaching an in-person section at its creation to ten teaching faculty with 5-6 sections of in-person and online asynchronous formats each semester. Despite the extensive number of offerings for the course, PHR2367 section are always filled to 40 students each along with extensive waitlisting each semester; the PHR2367 teaching team is constantly hiring new faculty to meet the demand for more sections. This development in the course offering has prompted the need to design a master course that can be standardized and ease the transition for new teaching faculty starting the course. What area(s) of improvement have you targeted for instructional redesign? This is often referred to as a “teaching problem.” What brought this “problem” to your attention? What motivated you to address this “problem”? Have you tried to address this “problem” in the past? While working to develop a standard course that can be easily picked up by newly hired teaching faculty, the instructional redesign team identified three primary areas for course improvement:
1. We observed that most argumentative final research papers were superficial in their arguments and rarely ever provided counterarguments to common objections against their thesis. We sought to develop an assessment that would better engage students in counterargument writing.
2. As the topic of drug use in America has evolved from the start of Colorado’s marijuana legalization to Ohio’s opioid crisis, Oregon’s all-drug legalization, and a federal marijuana legalization bill passing Congress, we recognized students are less interested in marijuana than previously and demanding more content on the opioid crisis and psychedelics.
3. The hectic schedules of pre-professional/working students have increased demand for online courses with 6-week offerings. The COVID-19 pandemic had furthered the demand for a 6-week alternative for students that contracted COVID-19 early on during the semester.
Identify student learning outcomes connected with this “problem” or enhancement. How do you typically evaluate student achievement of these learning outcomes? (Note that enhancing student experience of the course is an appropriate rationale for redesigning instruction.) The first area for improvement relating to superficial argumentative writing directly contracted the 2nd year writing GE outcomes for expressing ideas effectively and applying communication skills to challenges of the discipline. These are typically evaluated in a short writing assignment or graded discussion board in addition to the final research paper. Student satisfaction in the course content and variety of offerings broadly contribute to student engagement in the course and are evaluated through the SEIs or an additional exit survey. II. Development and Planning In this section, describe the pathway you have identified to assist you with this instructional redesign. Several are designated, including endorsements, CDI’s, etc. It is valid to work with a team of colleagues
or on your own through exploration of the literature, examining the instructional strategies of mentors or through a disciplinary pedagogical resources/events/experiences. The pathway is designed to deepen your knowledge of instructional strategies that address your identified problem or enhancement. In addition, students can serve as partners, librarians can be resources, and instructional designers and technologists are good partners. This course redesign development and planning pathway was a collaborative effort from senior teaching faculty that have previously taught the course, starting with discussions to identify teaching and learning challenges that can be addressed prior to releasing this master course to new faculty. These discussions included Chris Manion from WAC to identify student bottlenecks in learning writing concepts and designing comprehensive writing assessments with transparent expectations. After the AU19 and SP20 PHR2367 offerings the teaching faculty also met to share observations from the section they just completed, including exit survey and SEI feedback from students. The pedagogical solutions we developed for our course redesign were influenced by multiple professional development opportunities at OSU. During the online course design during Kickoff week ODEE education technologist Ross Tamburo introduced us to branch chain activities as a potential solution to engaging students in writing counterarguments, which received feedback from mentors/mentees during FIT and SoTL Community group meetings. Writing as Inquiry sessions with Amanda Folk from WAC helped develop the branch chain activity, improve the transparency in our writing assessments, and provided additional assessment tools for student information literacy. The Information Literacy workshops with University Libraries further polished our assessments by pointing out students’ common misconceptions toward academic writing. For updating the course content, the teaching team each focused on various aspects of drug use in American culture to research and condense the most relevant information into a six-week format. This included establishing a PHR2367 Microsoft Team to share the latest news in drug use in American culture and pedagogical research, along with our redesigned assessments. We have also sent representatives to the “Growing Hemp in Ohio” workshop hosted by OSU-Wooster in AU19 to learn the latest trends in hemp cultivation, product manufacturing, and law in Ohio. Tip: The Teaching Support Program is a foundational experience. The pathway is a way of deepening that introduction. Tip: If a team of faculty is working together, only one portfolio needs to be submitted for the team. All team members should fill out an interest form and record their intent and team, as well as contribute to the IT implementation, data collection, and composition. III. Implementation Describe in detail the IR implementation process. What did you do? When did you do it? How was it received by students or how did they respond/react in the learning context? Did the strategy change what was required in terms of preparation before instructional sessions? What, if any, educational technology was required? What, if any, teaching assistance did you need?
During the 2019-2020 school year we began developing the branch chain “choose your own adventure” debate simulation on a workshop Carmen Canvas course. We started with an assignment page that defined the purpose of the activity for students to understand the importance of writing compelling
counterarguments, the task to complete the branch chain debate simulation and submit a three paragraph short writing assignment that gives a counterargument to an objection against their stance on recreational marijuana legalization, and the grading criteria for the assignment.
The bottom of the assignment page included a link to the first page of the branch chain with the question “What is your stance on recreational marijuana legalization?” followed by “yes” or “no” links to their respective page (see branch chain map below). The second tier to this branch chain then listed the common reasons in support or against marijuana legalization, depending on what choice students made in the first tier. Students choose the reason that best describes their own view on legalization, which leads them to the final tier that presents the students with an objection to their argument on legalization (ex. You say that marijuana is safe because it’s a natural product, but so is hemlock. Just because something is natural does not mean it is safe.). The objection page includes an article supporting the objection and reminds the students that they are tasked to state their argument for/against legalization, describe the objection to that argument, then write a counterargument against the objection with support from an outside resource. The bottom of this objection page includes a button-link that will return them to the assignment page to submit their writing.
Once imported into a Carmen Canvas courses for the SU20 offerings, the branch chain activity required no further maintenance. The students were able to complete the assignment asynchronously without further assistance from the instructor. The only set up required was to update the final tier page links to the assignment page if an instructor wanted to change the name of the assessment.
Next, the instructional team utilized MindMeister mind mapping program to demonstrate backwards design of the new 6-week course offering of PHR2367.02 by critically evaluating which assessments and activities were most critical to achieving the second-year writing course GE expected learning outcomes (see below diagram). This included removing the midterm exam, which was superfluous to the weekly quizzes to assess student knowledge on drug use in America (red assessments were removed, while green were kept). We also replaced previous argumentative writing assessments with the branch chain short writing assignment and consolidated marijuana-related quizzes and lectures to allow more discussion on the opioid crisis and psychedelic drugs (green arrows for consolidated assessments). We also looked into student SEIs and exit survey data to determine a few activities that students felt were unhelpful in preparing for the final research paper. This resulted in a 6-week curriculum that we designed to achieve the same learning objectives through comparable assessments as the full semester course offerings.
The carmen course is designed to be run asynchronously with prerecorded lectures by the senior instructors in the course so that new teaching faculty can easily start instructing students with very little additional preparation or maintenance to the Carmen Canvas course. This allows more time for one-on-one student-instructor interaction and allocated time for meaningful feedback from instructors and peers on writing assignments. IV. Assessment Describe the direct and indirect methods of assessment you selected for determining the effect of this instructional strategy or strategies on student learning outcomes and/or experience? This could involve pre- and post-surveys, qualitative coding of student feedback on the instructional strategy, assignment
performance (compared to previous levels of performance or performance on a revised assignment), assessment question performance, etc.
To assess the effect the branch chain activity had on students’ counterargument writing ability we compared student final research paper performance scores, the incidence of counterargument writing in final research papers, and performance on other argumentative short writing and discussion assessments to historic controls pre-course redesign. To determine student perspective and the course redesign as well as assess impact of the branch chain activity on student views on complex American drug use issues, we administered a midcourse temperature reading survey and an anonymous course exit survey for extra credit.
Tip: SEI scores are not an indication of student learning but may indicate engagement or experience. SEI comments that are coded may provide additional information. Student perception of learning outcome achievement may be surveyed specifically.
Summarize the data you collected. How has this data changed from before you implemented your intervention? What student feedback did you review?
During the midcourse temperature reading survey, it was clear that students were struggling in the SU20 and AU20 semester despite the course being previously optimized for distance learning. For both SU20 and AU20 median students surveyed slight agreement that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their ability to participate in the course (Likert scores 3.4 SU20 and 3.1 AU20). Students also reported participation was between slightly impaired to neither agree/disagree on impairment due to the current racial tensions (2.7 SU20 and 2.3 AU20) and other factors not directly related to the pandemics (2.8 SU20 and 2.9 AU20). (See Table 1 in appendices)
Therefore, when we compared the final research paper performance scores (excluding late penalties and only averaging rubric scores) we observed comparable performance scores between pre/post-implementation of the branch chain activity when most other writing courses observed a significant decrease in research paper performance (89.4% vs 88.6%, p=0.321). (See Table 2 in appendices)
It was also interesting to note that implementing the branch chain activity during the 6-week offering of PHR2367.02 produced student research paper of comparable quality to other 15-week offerings of PHR2367 that implemented the branch chain, including another online offering that same SU20 semester the 6-week course was offered in (90.5% 6-week vs 87.0% 15-week, p=0.06). Likewise, research paper quality was comparable between 15-week online or in-person course offerings (86.3% distance learning vs 89.1% in-person, p=0.10)
However, when we compared the post-implementation research papers we observed a dramatic increase in students presenting counterarguments in their final research papers than we’ve seen previously (36.63% vs 13.87%). Interestingly, this increased incidence in counterarguments was not just seen in the argumentative research papers, but there was a >4-fold increase in the number of analytical final research papers that included counterarguments (21.2% vs 4.9%). (See Table 3 in appendices).
A comparison of the exit survey also observed a higher impression of the complexity of drug regulation/legalization and of the importance of literary research in students that completed the branch chain activity. In response to the question “what will you remember about this course 5 years from now?” students that completed the branch activity were >40-fold more likely to mention how the complexity of drug legalization and regulation was impressed on them (29.0% vs 0.7%, p<0.005). There is also a similar trend with increased impression on the literacy research process in students that completed the branch-chain activity (12.8% vs 7.6%, p=0.08). (See Table 4 in appendices).
Exit survey results also demonstrated that the 6-week course redesign appealed to pre-health students and students appreciated the discussion boards and the transparency in the assignments. When surveyed “why did you take PHR2367.02?” 16.3% of students replied because they were interested in pharmacy and another 16.3% stated they were pre-med. Previous reports on struggling with remembering to reply to discussion boards dropped from 11.9% to 1.4%, while student reports of appreciation for discussion board socialization increased from 9.1% to 23.4% since implementing the course redesign in SU20. Previous student complaints toward the lack of other drugs covered (2.1%), lack of instructor interaction (6.4%) and vague instructions for citation (3.5%) and peer review (4.3%) have been completely absent during the two semesters the course redesign has been implemented.
Tip: Several early portfolios did not provide enough detail in this area. Please feel free to use appendices.
Offer your conclusions regarding the effectiveness of this instructional strategy. Did it work, and how do you know it worked? Did it change student learning or experience? If there was no change, why not? How would you refine this approach if you choose to implement it again?
The PHR2367 course redesign has achieved the three primary objectives of improving student argumentative writing, matching content to the latest interests in drug use in America, and providing an effective 6-week course offering. Students were much more likely to acknowledge the complex healthcare issues involved in drug regulation/legalization in both their research papers and long term
impressions after completing the branch chain simulated debate. The lack of measurable improvement in the research paper performance scores is likely due to the additional struggles to student academic performance caused by the two pandemics of COVID-19 and racial tension; therefore students’ ability to produce comparable research papers under these conditions in both 6-week and 15-week course durations and both distance learning and in-person course deliveries is an achievement of the instructional redesign. The 6-week offering has proved appealing, comprehensive, and engaging to working pre-professional students that want to pursue the latest interests in drug use in American culture. New faculty have likewise reported an easy transition into teaching the course due to the master course design. The PHR2367 instructional team plans to continue implementing the branch chain activity and offering the 6-week course offering to enhance the accessibility and engagement of undergraduate students in our second year writing course.
V: Reflection - In this space you respond to the following questions: In light of your IR work, how has your view of the teaching question/issue you chose to address
changed?
Upon further literature review on the subject of argumentative writing, the instructional team gained an appreciation for how academic writing is another subject with intense racial/socioeconomic disparities. Students’ initial proficiency in writing is highly dependent on whether they were previously introduced to concepts such as academic language, data analysis, information literacy, and objective reasoning. Unfortunately, minority students and those from lower socioeconomic households are less likely to have been introduced to these concepts in their K-12 education, creating an unmet need for equitable teaching methods for writing courses.
What did you learn about yourself as a teacher from going through this process?
The collaborative nature of the instructional redesign team has highlighting our ability to make significant contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning when instructors have the time and resources to share best practices. We look forward to further investigations on equitable teaching and education innovation together.
What aspects of the IR process will help you approach future teaching questions?
In addition to the previously mentioned collaboration support, we also plan to utilize the IR process workflow into recognizing new areas of education research in other courses. Recognizing actionable steps to solving a problem in teaching and learning and working backwards from desired learning outcomes to implementing and a assessing a new teaching practice is now more readily applied.
What aspects of the IR process were most useful and least useful to your development as a teacher and why?
Having training sessions with time dedicated to guided progress through instructional redesign has been most helpful in overcoming the initial struggles in starting a course redesign project. Once direction was established, it became much easier to progress through the necessary pedagogical review and develop possible solutions that will carry on to our other teaching courses. The stage I TSP self-assessment survey may have been less helpful as would have been a group session to help recognize areas of improvement in achieving course expected learning outcomes.
What teaching support services are you most likely to make use of in the future and why?
ODEE and WAC mentioned above in the development and planning section were incredibly helpful in introducing the instructional team to pedagogically supported solutions to our observed teaching problems. We will very likely remain in contact with them as new challenges are discovered in our courses.
How confident do you feel in continuing to use instructional redesign in future courses or curricula?
The instructional redesign team is very comfortable in continued instructional redesign in future courses. We are already considering further enhancements in teaching grammar concepts and assessing equitable teaching methods within the course.
Appendices
Table 1: Mid-Course Temperature Reading Linkert Data Table
Table 2: Final Research Paper Performance Scores
Final Paper Score w/o Branch Chain% Adjust for lateness/absence % ID Semester Final Paper Score w/Branch Chain % Adjust for lateness/absence % ID Semester92 92 89 89 500104640 AU19 72 72 82 82 500282013 SU2097 97 94 94 500085353 AU19 94.5 94.5 94.5 500271493 SU20
6.976744 0 Different topic from major 0 1.428571 0 0 Opioid Crisis 2.777778 2.857143 2.325581 8.333333 Lectures (low priority, hard to retain)4.651163 0 Fit my schedule 0 1.428571 0 0 Consistent feedback 2.777778 2.857143 0 0 Midterm
4.651163 5.555556 Checkpoints (peer examples) 8.333333 1.428571 13.95349 0 Webinar (anxiety, vague, synthesis)2.325581 0 Everything 0 1.428571 4.651163 0 Motivation to start2.325581 0 Reading articles on drug use 0 1.428571 4.651163 0 Lack of peer interaction2.325581 5.555556 Elevator pitch (concise) 4.651163 2.777778 Finding sources (discussions helped)
2.325581 0 Understanding local marijuana law2.777778 No option to make up assignments
Drug-related (unique perspectives,
Amount of writing per week (discussions very involved, length requirements)
1. Why did you take PHR2367.02? (While "it's a GE credit I need to graduate" is an acceptable answer, tell us why then you chose PHR2367.02 out of all the other available 2nd year writing courses?)
2. What was one aspect of the course you enjoyed the most? (This could be a topic, an assignment, the
format, etc.)3. What was one aspect of the course you struggled
16.66667 11.42857 23.25581 33.33333 Everything helped 8.333333 5.714286 2.325581 0 Be sure to write formally and it'll help for the final paper 2.777778 7.142857 11.62791 13.88889 Literary research process (finding and assessing sources)0 10 2.325581 0 Webinar (organize thoughts for final paper) 8.333333 4.285714 2.325581 8.333333 Great instructor (knowledgeable and acessible) 0 7.142857 0 0 Stories of drug regulation (thalidomide, sulfanimide)0 4.285714 16.27907 25 Discussions (literature research, advocacy) 5.555556 4.285714 11.62791 2.777778 8.333333 5.714286 4.651163 2.777778 Writing skills
2.777778 1.428571 0 0 Nothing helped 5.555556 4.285714 2.325581 5.555556 5.555556 4.285714 2.325581 2.777778 Charlotte Figi's story
2.777778 1.428571 0 0 Early modules in particular 0 2.857143 0 0 0 2.857143 2.325581 2.777778 Great instructor (invested in student development)
2.777778 1.428571 2.325581 0 Later modules in particular (opioid) 0 1.428571 0 0 Videos are the best resource 2.777778 2.857143 0 0 Writing about drugs, social taboo2.777778 0 1.428571 0 0 Take notes during lectures 0 1.428571 2.325581 0 Sparked an interest in pharmacy (research, PharmSci minor)
2.777778 4.651163 0 I recommend 0 1.428571 2.325581 5.555556 How fun the course is (memes)2.777778 Recording your presentations is not as scary as you think 0 1.428571 0 2.777778 Best online course accessiblity/organization
2.777778 1.428571 0 0 Lack of involvement in other drugs0 1.428571 4.651163 13.88889 Opioid Crisis (impact on society)0 1.428571 30.23256 27.77778 Drug legality/regulation (War on Drugs, advocacy, recent legalizatio0 2.325581 0 Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on drug use0 2.325581 0 Large amount of writing
2.777778 5.555556 Learning people's different opinions8.333333 psychedelic drugs (medical)
Keep an open mind when engaging peers; you may gain Best structured online course (assignments all build up
to final paper)Course is cannabis focused, but you have freedom to
write whatever drug you want
Checkpoint assignments (outline, rough Schedule time in the begnning of the week
Short writing assignments (synthesis)The course is fun! (real world problems, freedom to research what interests you)
Get started on the final paper and research interesting topics early
6. Five years from now, what will you remember about this course?
4. Which lectures/assignments best prepared you for the final research paper (and it's checkpoints)? Were there any that left you feeling unprepared or were a
waste of time? 5. What is one thing you would tell students about to