Instructional Design

PSYC 454: Social Science Seminar, or "The Podclass" (Fall 2016)

In the spring of 2016 I was approached by two of my colleagues at Saint Joseph's College, Dr. Mark Seely and Dr. Michael Steinhour, about taking a course that had not been taught in over a decade and revamping it to be something that would be useful and provide students in the Social Science Division a course that would involve different perspectives on issues within social science. 

We decided on a "podcast class" (though not a true podcast): each week students would submit topics for discussion (along with topics we would bring) and the class was livecast through Moodle's Big Blue Button (BBB) tool. The instructor's would tackle the topics provided for that day from our own disciplines (Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology), and students could ask questions and interact through the BBB tool.  After the class that evening, students would then write reaction papers about one of the topics covered that class from their own discipline.

This was a first cut at this course, and a first cut that students responded to very positively. Unfortunately, the College suspended academic activities in 2017, and we were not given the chance to add to the course or revise it for a second iteration. Some of the changes we discussed making for a second iteration:

• Having the students take over one or more classes and discussing topics we provided from their own disciplines.

• Having students write a research paper that included multiple perspectives from social science disciplines.

• Make recordings of livestream available to students so they can go back and revisit topics or arguments.

Core 2: Curriculum Revisions from Spring 2016 for Spring 2017 iteration.

In 2016 I was asked to serve as the Director of Core 2, a second-semester freshman sequence in the Core Curriculum. This Core focused on the revolutions that helped create the Modern World. As Director I served as a "first among equals," who was there to facilitate discussion and any curricular changes the faculty of the Core wanted to make for the next semester, along with run the administrative portions of the program -- namely administering assessment of the sequence and serving on the Core Directors committee. 

During the first planning meeting for the Spring 2017 iteration of Core 2, we spent time looking at what went well and what did not in the last semester. One aspect that was clear from the discussion among faculty was that international students felt lost by a curriculum that placed a lot of emphasis on American history, and American students felt as though it was a re-hashing of their high school and middle school classes.

I and the Core 2 faculty decided to revamp portions of the course to have a wider view of the Modern World than just looking at the American view of that time period. We replaced a look at the pre-modern world and superstition that used Miller's the Crucible with a short reading from the Malleus Maleficarum (a handbook for finding witches). We also shortened a look at the American Revolution and included a discussion of other later revolutions (French Revolution, Revolutions of 1848.

As with the Core 5 example below, the College closed in 2017, and this was the last iteration to run before the closure. If we had more opportunity to fine-tune the curriculum further, we would have expanded the discussion of Native Americans to look at other aboriginal peoples throughout the world (e.g. Australia). We would have also looked at how the struggle for equal rights was not centered just on slaves in America, but in other places too. The key to the changes we made was to ensure that those in Core 2 received a holistic view of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries and what that means for us today.

Core 5: Carbon Footprint Reflection Assignment (Fall 2015)

Core 5 was part of the Junior-year portion of Saint Joseph's College's general education curriculum: the Core Curriculum. Core 5 was often called "Science Core," as it focused on humanity's intertwined relationship with each other, the planet, and the Universe. 

During this iteration of the Core, the curriculum spent a good deal of time talking about the human impact on climate change and the wider environment. To help provide a personal understanding to this part of the course, I created an assignment where students logged their consumption of resources (fuel, water, and electricity) and creation of garbage (food waste and landfill-material) for two weeks, and then reflected on the data they collected. To the right I've included the prompt and a sample consumption diary I created for students to use as a guide.

This was a first pass at this kind of assignment, and met with great success. As the College closed in 2017, I was not able to tweak the assignment or have a second "runthrough." If I had that opportunity, I would make the data collection period longer (a month or semester), and include halfway a charge to reduce their resource consumption and waste generation by half, and include that in the reflection.