CADE Course Design Workshop

The Competency Assessment in Distributed Education (CADE) workshop helps faculty rethink course design for both on-campus and online environments. The workshop focuses on building a course based on student mastery of competencies rather than just on content. The pedagogically-based workshop allows faculty to reflect on how they teach in face-to-face classrooms, and how their practice and goals for student learning translate into distributed environments. The workshop’s process and flow begin with an inquiry into both faculty teaching and what student understanding means and how to recognize it online.

Each workshop participant will prepare a portfolio that consists of six worksheets and accompanying narratives. The portfolio will be developed throughout the four workshop sessions, becoming a cumulatively more detailed document that is purposeful and useful at each stage of preparation. Guidelines for completing each portfolio section will be provided during the appropriate session. Completed portfolios for Case Study course examples will also illustrate the level of detail and issues coverage expected for participants’ portfolios. Completion of the portfolio’s worksheets and narratives will reinforce the CADE design process, and provide an excellent building block for subsequent course production and implementation.

To illustrate how the portfolio worksheets lead workshop participants through the CADE competencies to evidence to tasks course design process, Prof. Randy Bass of Georgetown University has provided the following example based on his undergraduate English course Reading the American Cultural Past. In his course, Prof. Bass encourages students to speculate. He chose this as an important skill for students to foster because that is what “experts” in his field do—they explore possibilities, question why this particular word is used in this sentence, explore the historical context of the text—all this to inform their interpretation of the text.

Worksheet 1: Thinking about Competencies

Worksheet 1 asks participants to categorize the knowledge they want students to acquire or master into three levels:

·       Level Three: What higher-order thinking stills should students develop?

·       Level Two: What procedures, techniques or methods will they need to know how to use?

·       Level One: What content will students need to be familiar with?

The three Level Three skills will be the focus for subsequent CADE portfolio development.

Worksheet 1: Thinking about Competencies
Level Three (Strategic Knowledge) What complex thinking strategies and processes will students need to develop in the course?	·       Students will learn an inquiry or reading protocol (strategy) for understanding a story—questions generated from this inquiry strategy will drive the analysis of the story ·       Students will learn a strategy for speculating about various aspects of a story. ·       Students will learn a strategy for analyzing the cultural significance of a story
Level Two (Procedural Knowledge) What procedures, techniques or methods will students need to know how to use in the course?	·       Stylized techniques for using language in the story (depending on the context of the story, but there may be medical terms, economic terms and scientific terms in one paragraph) ·       How to identify rhetorical strategies used by authors ·       How to research historical images or articles ·       Techniques for using the text as evidence in supporting arguments
Level One (Factual Knowledge) What facts, details, concepts, and terminology will students need to be familiar with in this course?	·       Vocabulary (e.g., rhetoric vs. culture) ·       Things to look for on an initial reading of a text (e.g., author's style, voice, narrator, setting, audience) The fact that a reader's knowledge of history may impact the story

Worksheet 2: Evidence of Student Mastery

Worksheet 2 asks participants to identify the evidence (student thinking or behavior) that will indicate student mastery of each of the three Level Three strategic knowledge competencies in the course.

Worksheet 2: Evidence of Student Mastery
Competencies List the strategic knowledge competencies (from Worksheet 1) that students will master in the course	Evidence Identify the evidence (student thinking or behavior) that will indicate student mastery of the strategic knowledge competencies in the course.
Students will learn an inquiry or reading protocol (strategy) for understanding a story—questions generated from this inquiry strategy will drive the analysis of the story	Students can read the texts, take the time to summarize what they have read, formulate expectations of what the author will say in subsequent pages and generate questions about the meaning being conveyed by the author.
Students will learn a strategy for speculating about various aspects of a story.	Students can generate initial text-based questions (based on words, and language) and then more research-type questions (the political, and social practices at the time of the writing  and the cultural impact on the text, - in other words, what was happening at the time that could have affected the author.)
Students will learn a strategy for analyzing the cultural significance of a story	Students are able to identify the relationship between text and context, and recognize, and talk through in reading a text.  Analyzing the cultural significance to me would be the ability to follow-up on one of those research-type questions above, “What was happening at the time that could have had an impact on what the author wrote?”  Looking at a photograph, drawing, or another letter and making inferences and connections to the text would be one

Worksheet 3: Evidence Analysis

Worksheet 3 asks participants to select one of the strategic knowledge competencies and to describe how they would assess student mastery of the competency at three levels of performance-- Novice (students still in the course of study), Graduate (recent graduates of the degree program) and Expert (faculty and practitioners with several years of experience). Four prompting questions guide workshop participants in writing the scoring guides or rubrics that characterize the expert, graduate and novice performance levels. CADE's use of scoring rubrics makes the assessment and grading process more understandable and diagnostic for both students and instructors.

Worksheet 3: Evidence Analysis
Select and list the most important strategic competency from Worksheet 1   Assessment For the selected competency, describe how you would assess student mastery. Be sure the assessment has the capability of yielding evidence of student mastery.	Students will learn an inquiry or reading protocol (strategy) for understanding a story—questions generated from this inquiry strategy will drive the analysis of the story       Students will act as editor of a new series of volumes called the “Rhetorical-Cultural Approaches to 19th Century American Literature.”  They will choose a novel and five archival documents (primary sources) that ought to be “bundled” with the novel as part of this volume. They will write the editor’s introduction to the volume, addressing the following question: How do your primary resources/ archival documents help readers better develop and apply a “rhetorical-cultural approach” to the novel?
Prompting Questions	Expert	Graduate	Novice
How will an expert, a recent graduate and a novice student approach the above learning activity?	Deals equally with rhetorical-cultural approach, creating a coherent synthesis between the two approaches.	Recognizes the interplay between rhetorical and cultural but does not fully develop both.	Fails to acknowledge the rhetorical and/or cultural elements and implications of the text.
What features of the problem or situation will they focus on?	Provides a focused and consciously crafted presentation of the issues and arguments; grammatically sound; uses language with precision. Has a sense of sequence and progression of argument.   Questions drive analysis, which leads to further questions that reveal deep understanding of issues at stake; thinks out loud and represents thinking processes as part of a structured exploration.	Provides a clear argument with some logic that either loses focus at points or ignores important aspects of the argument Asks several questions, with or without attempt to answer them in order to further the exploration of topic; some thinking out loud but not always for the purpose of deepening the analysis.	Addresses one or more topics with minimum development, or grammar hinders reader’s understanding of argument.   Asks questions whose answers are evident; ignores the importance of questions in exploration and analysis of complex topics.
To what extent will students consider past experiences in thinking about the problem?	Uses quotations and specific language effectively to support and further argument; uses close analysis of the text as a basis and evidence for grappling with significant problems and ideas. questions drive analysis,	Uses quotations as examples or starting points but does not follow through with engaging the importance of language or writing strategies for larger argument.	Uses quotes sporadically to merely comment on plot; little attention paid to specific language.
What actions or behaviors would exhibit the ability to think analytically in the discipline?	Has a developed perspective that shows a facility with alternative arguments and positions, and chooses one on the basis of reasoned evidence.	Acknowledges different arguments and their complexity but does not take them any further.	Recites arguments but does not show comprehension of them.

Worksheet 4: Course Outline

Worksheet 4 provides a structure for developing a detailed course outline that consists of two parts. A single course-level outline provides a course description, course assignments, grading policy, and required readings. This is followed by an outline for each course module or session that provides a module/session description, the competencies to be mastered in the module/session, the associated evidence of competency mastery, and the session assignments.

	Worksheet 4: Course Outline (Partial)
Course Title:	ENGL210. Reading the American Cultural Past
Semester Year:	Fall 2008

Module One		Reading the Time Period: Bartleby the Scrivener
Description of session (What you hope to accomplish in this session and specific learning objectives)		Herman Melville was highly attuned to contemporary issues and cultural forms. He was also quite fascinated by the idea of “reading” in its broadest perceptual sense (the reading of meaning and of signs).  There is an element of his more social fictions (two of which are “Bartleby” and “Benito Cereno”) where the issue of readability and unreadability plays a huge role in how his narratives manipulate social and cultural meaning. How does his fiction count on “unreadability” as a significant rhetorical device and strategy for cultural critique?  How does some literature derive its critical power through complexity, questioning, and confounding? How might cultural forms of a particular place and time, rendered in “literary” language and structures, illuminate cultural complexities, as questions at least if not answers?
Competencies to be mastered in this session		A part of understanding narrative fiction as the "complex intersection of form and meaning" is to feel at some level the idea of complexity, itself. Students by and large come in with a tendency to read novels transparently, or simply as portrayals of human experience and emotion. Although I don't want them to lose this human dimension, I do want them to master the following competencies about narrative fiction: ·            Recognize how words point to social and cultural practices (institutional discourse) ·            See character as “consciousness” embedded in social contexts ·            Think about absence and silence.
Evidence of Mastery (Description of what students can do as a result of developing the competency)		The relationship between text and context is something I want students to identify, recognize, and talk through in reading a work of fiction.    Evidence that students have developed a strategy for analyzing the cultural significance of a story would be their ability to follow-up on such research-type questions as: “What was happening at the time that could have had an impact on what the author wrote?”  Looking at a photograph, drawing, or another letter and making inferences and connections to the text would be one way to analyze cultural significance.
Assignments (Including evidence-generating tasks and other graded items)		Students will act as editors of a new series of volumes called the “Rhetorical-Cultural Approaches to 19th Century American Literature.”  Each volume in the series is comprised of a 19th-century novel and a set of primary source documents that illuminate the novel in its rhetorical and cultural contexts.   Using Bartleby the Scrivener as the core novel, students will select five archival documents (primary sources) that they think ought to be “bundled” with the novel as part of this volume. Students will then write the editor’s introduction to the volume,  addressing the following question: How do your primary resources/ archival documents help readers better develop and apply a “rhetorical-cultural approach” to the novel?
Grading Rubric for Module One Paper
	C Grade		B Grade	A Grade
Strategies	Fails to acknowledge the rhetorical and/or cultural elements and implications of the text		Recognizes the interplay between rhetorical and cultural but does not fully develop both.	Deals equally with rhetorical-approach, creating a coherent synthesis between the two approaches.
Analysis	Asks questions whose answers are evident; ignores the importance of questions in exploration and analysis of complex topics.		Asks several questions, with or without attempt to answer them in order to further the exploration of topic.	Asks questions that drive analysis, which leads to further questions that reveal a deep understanding of the issues at stake.
Considerations	Uses quotes sporadically to merely comment on plot; little attention paid to specific language.		Uses quotations as examples or starting points but does not follow through with engaging the importance of language or writing strategies for larger argument.	Uses quotations effectively to support and further argument, and uses close analysis of the text for grappling with significant problems and ideas.
Structure	Not professional-level work; several errors in paper; citation style has many errors; reference list has several errors; structure of paper below graduate work; major grammatical difficulties		Work meets minimum professional requirements; one or two errors in paper; one or two errors in citation style; reference list has one or two errors; structure of paper meets minimum graduate requirements	Work meets and exceeds professional requirements; paper has no errors in citations or structure; reference list is error-free

Worksheet 5: Instructional Strategies

Worksheet 5 asks participants to describe one strategic knowledge learning activity for their course. They then describe how they would apply the seven cognitive apprenticeship concepts—modeling, coaching, scaffolding, fading, reflection, articulation, and exploration--in teaching the learning activity. The goal is to design a learning environment where students are encouraged to develop skills and competencies at an expert level.

Worksheet 5: Instructional Strategies
What is the strategic competency to be learned? (refer to Worksheet One)	Students will learn an inquiry or reading strategy for understanding a story—questions generated from this inquiry strategy will drive the analysis of the story
For each Cognitive Apprenticeship element below, describe how the element will be applied in teaching the learning activity.
Modeling How and where will you demonstrate your thinking process and provide an explanation of your actions?	I might model how I would read a passage in Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener through a hyperlinked image of a paragraph to allow students to interact with words, sentences, and more complex meaning.  In some fields, a professor might model a full problem-solving approach.  In a literature or a humanities course, it often involves modeling ways to resolve a few issues--just enough to get students to the next level of inquiry.   In literature, my strategies may provide a map to help students move from a "careful reading" of the text to in-depth research in digital archives of primary materials."  They are more prepared now to build and refine their own strategies for reading texts.
Coaching How will you guide students as they try to complete tasks and provide hints and tips when needed?	With the idea of coaching I am trying to intervene at two levels. I look for the skills that they are applying correctly, and I try to reinforce those skills. Coaching often involves helping students to apply strategies for keeping questions open, and not coming to premature conclusions.    Expert readers know how to keep asking questions without having complete knowledge or context. Through electronic interaction, I will coach students to identify the strategies implicit in continuing to ask good questions.
Scaffolding How will you incorporate hints and tips to solve specific problems?	Discussion boards are particularly effective for making visible the connections between reading and research.  I point out when they use good strategies of reasoning for moving from a textual reference in the story to an inquiry in an online digital archive.
Fading How will you gradually reduce the amount of scaffolding, shifting more and more of the control to the learner?	Once students have worked independently with the cycle of reading, reflecting, and rethinking, I reframe the problem in a more complex way and reorient it to group problem solving. In a humanities context, reframing often means presenting the question more as a scholar or educator would.   We move from the initial problem that students tackled individually:  “How do we use this story to open up some of the complexities about its social and cultural context?”,  to a more complex problem that students tackle collaboratively: “Where would you go to find more information about this story as a cultural product? How do we find the same “problems” in a larger cultural context?” At this point, I think of myself as FADING more into the background, as students take on all the pieces of the process themselves.
Reflection How will you encourage students to look back over their efforts to complete a task and analyze their own performance?	I would make a next step to prompt students to build their own resource for reading 19th century novels and present this in a web format –as a Web page or PowerPoint presentation (depending on the tools available to them).  This would require more work on the part of students, but the act of constructing a web site would allow them to explore what has been done before and collect their reflections in a format other than a paper.
Articulation How will you encourage articulation among students to give reasons for their decisions and strategies, thus making their domain and strategic knowledge more explicit?	The Web page construction and organization activity would prompt them to think interactively about their content and they would be forced to decide how to link one piece of information (say the introduction) to another (such as the recommended strategies.)  If they didn’t have the tools, I would even be interested in seeing if they could sketch out the organization of the site and explain why they choose to link one piece of content to another.
Exploration How will you promote explorative opportunities for students to try out different strategies and hypotheses and observe their effects?	The online environment enables students to build meaningful materials for each other.  To do that, the students need to make use of the record of their own attempts to solve a problem.

Worksheet 6: Next Steps

Worksheet 6 requires participants to plan the completion of their course's design, development and delivery. They explore a variety of topics that need to be considered before their course is delivered to students. These topics include deciding on what technology they will use to deliver the course, identifying the media elements to facilitate learning, selecting appropriate interaction techniques for communicating with students, and deciding how to structure course content and assessments in the campus course management system.

Worksheet 6: Next Steps
Please describe your plan for completing the development of your online course. List activities, schedules, dependencies and any other important information needed to finish your course.
I will be offering this 14-week course completely online in the fall semester. I will use the spring and summer semesters to complete the course design and development.   Using the completed session designs in this portfolio as a model, I will produce the Worksheet 3 through 6 designs for the remaining strategic knowledge sessions of the course. This will include developing the discussion board questions for each of the sessions, and creating more effective case scenarios to make visible the connections between reading and research. I plan to use some streaming video presentations so I can “model” how to read and analyze the required course readings. I also plan to develop a few Flash animation modules to "coach" students through their critical analyses of the readings.   Throughout the course design and development period, I will work closely with the designated campus instructional technology and library staff. I want to ensure that the multimedia elements that I design are within the technical and resource capabilities of the media dept. In identifying electronic readings and references for student use in the course, I also want to ensure that the library is able to acquire them or identify appropriate substitutes. I will use Blackboard as the course management system, and will take the necessary training sessions for the uses I intend to make of the software.
Course Completion Schedule
June	Review competencies and evidence for each session. Compile existing material that will be used in the course. Identify and meet with appropriate IT resources and schedule work time.
July	Finish designing assignments and instructional strategies. Determine remaining media requirements that support the development of competencies and begin producing content with the help of campus instructional technology staff.
August	Finish Blackboard development and test course content. Ensure all links and documents are operational.

For more information about the CADE workshop, please contact:

Dr. Richard Vigilante, Executive Director

Jesuit Distance Education Network

(212) 348-6113

vigilante@ajcunet.edu

www.jesuit.net