Instructional Strategies & Assessment Methods

Artifacts from this course:

Instructional Strategies and Assessment Methods (766) was an ID course which taught the interrelationship and development of course design objectives, strategies, and assessments. This page contains key artifacts from the course. The artifacts were made in service to an existing course design, "Navigating Diverse Beliefs" (see EDUC 765), the executive summary of which follows.

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PROJECT OVERVIEW

"NAVIGATING DIVERSE BELIEFS"

Howard University's incoming freshman class is larger than ever, and this trend is expected to continue. A premier HBCU, Howard University respects diverse viewpoints and its offerings support diversity programs. For these incoming students (and even the faculty and staff that teach and support them) an explosion of activism in and around a social media landscape has played an enormous role in the silo-ing of perspectives and rewarding of confirmation bias. This social context combined with the perennial humanistic need to sharpen or maintain respectful inquiry prompts the need to reinforce interpersonal communication and inquiry skills. The seminar-style diversity course "Navigating Diverse Beliefs" meets that need as a supplement to other diversity initiatives, as it has been suggested that diversity programs in isolation produce only a modest positive impact on moral development (Parker, Barnhardt, Pascarella, & McCowin, 2016).

"Navigating Diverse Beliefs" meets the needs described by serving a needed diversity component and establishing a simple, repeatable method to initiate and maintain relationships in the face of a difficult transition. What's more, it inculcates foundational concepts of epistemic critical thinking and metacognition required for postsecondary coursework. The course teaches the informal epistemic method known as Street Epistemology (SE), which respectfully explores the confidence level of an individual's belief. SE acts as an audit of belief, and its non-confrontational style uses epistemology—how we know what we know—to help interlocutors self-test and self-evaluate their own beliefs and belief systems.

This seminar-style instruction aims to teach this simple, effective method for orienting matriculating freshman toward critical thinking, inquiry, and tolerance of diverse viewpoints. Underclassmen, graduate students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to register. These skills aid student interpersonal relationships as well as the rigors of their academic pursuits at Howard. Owing to uncertainty in the unfolding covid-19 pandemic, the instruction will be delivered in a synchronous, online format in cohorts of 30 – 40 learners. It is instructor led.

LEARNERS AND PROJECT DESIGN

The primary target learners for "Navigating Diverse Beliefs" are new students at Howard University, largely matriculating freshmen. The following list shows characteristics of these learners relevant to the course's design:

Young – of all undergraduates in Fall 2019, 97% were age 24 and under (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2022)
African American – of all undergraduates in Fall 2020, 67% were African American (NCES, 2022)
Female – of all undergraduates in Fall 2020, 72% were women (NCES, 2022)
Educated – above average scoring on standardized academic tests (NCES, 2022)

In brief, the design of the course is built around these specific learners in the following ways. Presuming the course topic's novelty to young learners, content is simplified into a few memorable steps and does not go into more advanced techniques. It also restricts conversation topics; non-controversial or everyday beliefs are built in to the objectives since novice learners risk damaging new and important relationships if the method is not performed to standard. While SE is founded on respectfully understanding difficult or controversial beliefs, the focus of this training is to master the method in a risk-free setting. Finally, assessments are streamlined to account for the motivation and number of students. The seminar as proposed is non-credit bearing, so assessments must have a just-in-time delivery. Cohorts are quite large, so assessment must be automated where possible.

ALIGNMENT

The charts below pursue alignment in the design of the "Navigating Diverse Beliefs" course. Alignment ensures that objectives, activities, and assessments are as clearly related to one another as possible. My strategy in drafting these alignment charts is to build assessments from clear and actionable objectives. From these assessments, I create chunked activities in the style of Horton (2012): absorb, do, and connect. The strategy is based on backwards design.

Alignment

ACTIVITIES

The following absorb-, do-, and connect-type instructional activities (Horton, 2012) are derived from the alignment chart in the previous section. These activities are derived by considering the course objectives and their alignment with the subsequently designed assessments (next section). Consideration is also given to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles (Florida Consortium on Postsecondary Education and Intellectual Disabilities [FCPEID, n.d.). The sample activities below showcase one of each type of activity. The samples below takes place in the middle of the course. Learners have already completed prerequisite objectives for defining partner beliefs and have just absorbed information about being respectful and maintaining rapport.

Module: Respectfully Questioning Reliability

Terminal objective:

Respectfully question reliability of interlocutor's epistemology within 3 minutes

Enabling objectives:

conduct an outsider test by asking how someone who does not hold the belief might reject the belief
conduct an exception test to the interlocutor's justification by asking if there are any real or imagined conditions that would reduce their confidence in their justification

In exploring another's belief, perhaps the more challenging activity is the respectful epistemic probing of that belief. Maintaining a respectful, non-disputing stance—especially in the face of a belief you may not hold—is challenge enough, but we must also aim to ask specific kinds of questions that get at the heart of how or why our partner may hold such a belief: outsider tests and exception tests.

ACTIVITY 1: INTRODUCING OUTSIDER AND EXCEPTION TESTS

Activity 1 is an absorb activity. Horton (2012, p. 67) describes absorb activities as inspirational and informative in which learners are given media from which to "extract and comprehend knowledge." This activity is a presentation type, consisting of a light reading and physical demonstration of the concepts on video. The reading and demonstration are selected to model a complex relationship between a conversation topic and the probing question genre. They present information multimodally, with attention paid to UDL. For UDL methods, multiple examples in multiple formats are presented, text and audiovisual, to satisfy recognition learning (FCPEID, n.d.). The text examples of the content also support affective learning by offering an "adjustable level of challenge" FCPEID, n.d.). The foregoing portions of the module, not included here, discussed rapport building and maintenance, which go hand-in-hand with the probing questions.

The outsider test asks an interlocutor to imagine opposing viewpoints to their belief (e.g., from an outsider), and the exception test encourages the interlocutor to test their belief under a variety of conditions. These tests are key to enabling a conversation partner a fuller, more critical exploration of their belief. Because the content of such asked questions is always contextual to the topic at hand, they take full attention and practice.

Let's witness the tests in action by seasoned SE practitioners. Watch the first video about religious beliefs below for a minute or two. What is the speaker's outsider test? Start the video at 17:57.

Watch the second video about belief in astrology for a few minutes. What is the speaker's (man on the left) exception test? Start the video at 5:48.

ACTIVITY 2: ENGAGING IN STREET EPISTEMOLOGY

Activity 2 is a do activity. Horton (2012, p. 129) describes do activities as "the verbs of learning," where learners engage in meaningful learning tasks. This activity is a practice type, consisting of a checklist job aid and a performance of a series of target steps. The checklist and performance resemble a hands-on kind of practice (Horton, 2012, p. 133 –136), giving the learner work to perform, approximating a real-life scenario. Additionally, the checklist and performance are selected to serve later assessment purposes. This do-type performance is itself the focus of the course's final self-assessment, where portions of the checklist become gatekeeper tasks, which requires observation and identification before moving to the next step in the learned procedure. Learners will fill in blanks indicating the content of each step of their performance. For UDL methods, affective learning is supported in this activity by fostering peer interaction and feedback, the checklist serving as a measure of one's own progress (FCPEID, n.d.). Still, this activity could be more UDL-friendly. There is only one format for the job aid, for example, and the amount of information could overload learners.

By this time we have reviewed all the steps to having respectful conversations about belief. Using the checklist below, conduct and record an SE conversation with your partner. Later, you will use the recording to self-assess. In this initial conversation, it is important to avoid contentious or controversial beliefs. While SE is most useful for these beliefs, our goal is to first master the basic method. In your conversation, use one of the following topics: sports, spring fashion, university studies.

ACTIVITY 3: COMPARING QUESTIONING TECHNIQUES

Activity 3 is a connect activity. Horton (2012, p. 163) likens connect activities to a bridge that carries the target information to what the learner already knows. This activity is a questioning type, which encourages learners to build that "bridge" by querying one another and seeking to fill in gaps in understanding. While questioning activities are primarily used for knowledge objectives, they are an important secondary component to this module's emphasis on the creation of probing SE questions. Considerations of question design in questioning activities include the expertise level of the asker and answerer, the open-endedness of the questions, and establishing a goal in relation to the questions. UDL method considerations include a raft of affective support, including adjustable challenge, peer interaction, and learning context balance (FCPEID, n.d.). Strategic learning is supported by allowing learners to elicit and learn from immediate feedback (FCPEID, n.d.).

We have learned the crux of respectful questioning and engaged in a light conversation with a partner by following our SE checklists. Because making probing questions is so contextual, let's end the module by comparing our outsider and exception questions. Your goal for this task is to consider how your probing questions succeeded and how they could be improved. With your partner, reflect and compare using a few of the following questions:

Did you recognize my outsider/ exception test? Do you remember what I asked? How did it make you feel?

How confrontational did my probing questions seem? How can I prevent that?

Where do we see these types of probing questions in daily life?

What's another probing question I could have asked on the topic?

How hard was it for you to come up with a probing question?

Activities

Assessment

The assessment plan for this module is dependent on the instructional context. As conceived, the delivery method and cohort size make a performance self-assessment the most suitable method. However, an earlier version of the alignment chart brainstormed a different approach based on a face-to-face, classroom style instruction: paper- or oral-based assessments written, administered, and graded by an instructor. See that document here. As this course is not face-to-face nor a classroom-style design, performance testing was chosen. Note: evaluation is not developed here but should be an important next step. The course could utilize the four levels of Kirkpatrick's model (Mindtools.org, n.d.), starting at the reaction level as the course concludes. Self-assessment worksheets (example below at the end of this section) could be audited to evaluate the learning level, i.e., whether learners completed the objectives. Behavior, the third level is elusive in a course of this limited breadth in a class so large. Perhaps additional diversity training may measure with a survey question whether learners found utility in SE beyond the course and the fourth step, results, could be completed.

But as for the assessment itself, Horton's (2012, p. 241) criteria served as a guide when deciding to conduct a performance test: the learning target is a procedure, the procedure is complex, speed of the procedure is important, or the test serves as a qualification for the real world. Of these criteria, the objectives of "Navigating Diverse Beliefs" meets the first three.

For the self-assessment, learners first complete a practice performance, which must be recorded via meeting software (see the do activity, Activity 2, in the Sample Activities section above). After all instructional modules are complete, learners review the recording with a modified checklist. The checklist contains the series of necessary steps in the SE conversation procedure, and it requires students to fill in the content of each step. There is an option to list steps as not having content in the event the learner can not identify the content or forgot to include it in their original conversation.

An important note is that this recorded conversation on which the self-assessment is conducted meets the criteria of a simulation: the conversation has limited topics and is inauthentic insofar that learners have not decided to conduct it themselves. Horton's (2012, p. 241) criteria for choosing simulations is that other test questions cannot adequately measure performance, authentic performance can be harmful, or simulations simplify scoring the activity. In the case of this course's objectives, all three are relevant to some extent. First, a paper-based test cannot capture the complexity of the SE procedure; next, free rein to choose controversial topics presents a very real risk of learner's damaging interpersonal relationships before mastering the basics of SE conversation; and, as mentioned in the opening paragraph, the large-cohort and remotely attended course could not be scored or the performance observed practically except by the learners themselves.

Below, find the sample modified checklist, partially filled. Note how the checklist encourages learners to consider not only that a step was completed, but focuses attention on how the step was completed. The self-assessment determines whether the learner has met the terminal learning objectives:

Terminal Objective 1: Define an interlocutor's non-controversial belief and justification for that belief within 3 minutes

Terminal Objective 2: Respectfully question reliability of interlocutor's epistemology within 3 minutes

Assessment

Reflection

In this course reflection, I consider two design choices I made related to strategic alignment.

Reflection