UN1001 Instructor's Course Guidelines

Important research findings:

the challenge of the work students experience in their first year
+ the time they invest to meet the challenge
= the pattern set for their studies for all four years

Schilling, J.M. & Schilling, K.L. (1999) Increasing expectations for student effort. About Campus, 4(2), 4-10

Therefore:
Each Perspectives section must be designed to introduce first-year students to challenging college-level work.

Perspectives must set a high level of expectations and the expectations must be consistent among sections.

To that end, the following guidelines are offered.

Goals of Perspectives (yes, they're hefty, but hey--a committee wrote them)

Engage students in active inquiry into interdisciplinary questions
Teach students to integrate knowledge from a variety of perspectives into complex insights
Introduce students to the following intellectual habits
- critical thinking
- critical reading
- accuracy and thoroughness
- creativity
- using reasoning and evidence to support arguments
- thoughtful consideration of others' ideas and positions
- effective oral, written and visual communication
- textual, empirical, and other kinds of research
- effective learning strategies and time management
Help students identify with MTU's mission to promote diversity, creativity, leadership, and teamwork.

Minimum Requirements for Each Perspectives Section
To insure that the above goals are achieved with consistency in all sections of this important course, each instructor is asked to do the following:

Plan a course focused on inquiry into an unresolved, complex question that incorporates perspectives from different disciplines
Provide for daily class discussions of issues and ideas in the course readings and other sources
Schedule a library orientation
Require at least 20 pages of formal (graded) writing and 20 pages of informal (not graded) writing;
Require one oral presentation and one visual presentation (can be combined with oral presentation).
Email a copy of your syllabus to the Director of General Education, currently Dr. Brad Baltensperger, 204 Academic Office Bldg, brad@mtu.edu
Assign a final 1-2 page typed reflection statement, collect it and send it to the Director of General Education. The directions for this statement should be-
Please reflect on the following:
1) what you may have learned in this course,
2) what you may feel more capable doing now than you did at the start of the course,
3) what impact this may have outside of the particular context of this of this class (what did you learn that wasn't particularly about this topic - life lessons).

A. Suggestions for Designing Your Course to Meet the Goals

You can begin to address the first two goals in the following ways:
1. design your course around an unresolved question or questions
2. be sure the question is complex and can be addressed from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
3. select reading materials, films, videos, performances, etc. that are challenging and that represent multiple disciplines and perspectives.
4. select some materials that are international in scope and that represent diverse racial and gender perspectives.
The materials you select should not include a textbook. Students should read from a variety of fiction and nonfiction materials that are both intellectually challenging and engaging. Not all of the reading should be at an expert level, but most of it should be aimed at a college-educated audience.
You can further address the goals by designing a syllabus that provides a sequence of reading, writing, and discussion-based assignments that will lead students to increasingly complex understandings. Although a few brief mini-lectures may be necessary to introduce important background material, most of the course should be discussion based. Students should be actively engaged in thinking, reading, reflecting in writing, and talking during the class period.
The most successful results will come from integrating multiple disciplines and perspectives in your selection of materials and from planning class activities that build on one another. A sequence of activities might include:
- a series of reading assignments accompanied by informal writing about ideas
- large and small group discussions, panels, guest speaker
- discussion of a teacher-designed research assignment (specify informative, persuasive, or analytical)
- a visual presentation of preliminary questions for research
- a library visit
- library and internet searches
- discussion of practices that insure academic integrity (mandatory in all sections)
- discussion of ways to evaluate quality of evidence
- oral presentations on preliminary results
- draft #1 to get ideas together and formulate argument or thesis
- peer review of drafts
- draft #2 to incorporate peer suggestions
- teacher review of draft with suggestions for revision
- draft # 3 (final)
- oral presentations of final draft
- grading of final draft according to previously specified rubric

B. Remember that students are not all alike

On a campus like MTU where there are so many white, male engineering students, it is easy to lose sight of diversity, both visible and invisible, especially while planning for a class. Although our student body appears relatively homogeneous, please keep in mind that your class may have women students, non-engineering majors, students from other countries, students with disabilities, students from working-class families, students of color, students from local rural areas as well as suburban and urban areas, students working through their sexual orientation, students with strong religious identities, and so on. In other words, students have multiple identities and these identities influence their world views and habits of mind.

A few specific suggestions for addressing multiple identities in your Perspective's class follow:

Internationalize the curriculum and your pedagogy and standards.
As you clarify your expectations about what students are expected to know and how they are expected to behave, think about whether these expectations would be the same in other countries. Talk to colleagues and older students who have studied internationally, including in nonwestern countries.

Think about your assignments in terms of whether students who have not grown up in American culture and educational systems would have the background knowledge to complete them.

Review resources you have chosen: Have they been written and produced by Americans? Is it possible to add something written or produced with an international perspective, including second and third world nations?

Keep in mind that second language learners need to achieve fluency before correctness. Too great a concern about correctness inhibits thinking and risk taking. Some of them will be learning in English for the first time, so you may need to adjust reading and writing assignments in ways that accommodate their entry into American educational systems.

Be direct about values you hold regarding documentation, argument structure, and "originality" (as in origin of knowledge [Eastern] or newness of ideas [Western]).
Model inclusive, globally aware habits of communication
International students can become isolated in the class unless teachers make a deliberate effort to include them and to model to the class how to listen to and read accented English.

Teach American students how to interact with international students rather than avoid them. In many cases, if the Americans were students in China or Malaysia or India, they would be welcomed as "guests" and provided detailed explanations about customs and traditions and expectations. They would be given a grace period to adjust. Care would be given to acknowledge the stress caused by the change they were making in climate, food, culture, and ways of learning.
Consider the perspectives of students from American involuntary minority groups (African American, Native American, Mexican American).
Differences in race and cultural history affect students' perceptions of the reasons for current conditions in American society, their expectations for the teacher-student relations, their communication styles, their perceptions of concepts such as respect, pride, and authority, their relations to community and home environments, their body and spoken language, and their responses to Western history, art, literature, and theater. (Citations to study this topic are available on request). Below are a few ways to work on this aspect in your course.

Do you have readings written by Americans of color on your syllabus? Is this a missing perspective that you can address in your planning of the course?

Be careful not to expect students of color to become the experts on issues of color. They are learners not teachers.

To get a sense of some of the challenges diverse MTU students face in their first year of college, take a look at the following homegrown website:
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/makingourmark/mark2.html

C. Recommended Teaching Practices

Be Explicit
The most frequent comment that experienced Perspectives teachers have made is they are surprised at how explicit they need to be about their expectations. Many of the suggestions that follow are designed to share the experienced teachers' insights about how to be more explicit than they knew how to be.

Remember, at the beginning of fall term, your students are still high school students learning to be college students. They are out of their comfort zone. Push them to grow and to take intellectual risks in kind and firm ways.
Daily Assignments
It's best to have students involved in reading and writing in preparation for every class period. In this way, the baseline recommended suggestion of 20 pages of informal writing and 20 pages of formal writing can be accomplished a bit at a time and sequenced so that each assignment builds on the previous one. Spread short reading assignments over a series of days rather than have a book due at the end of two weeks.
Accountability
Each reading assignment should be accompanied by some form of accountability that begins right away on the second day of class to make clear that this is a serious course with frequent deadlines. Some short recommended writing assignments to pair with reading are:
- Have students write a summary of the main argument
- Ask students to copy the most important sentence in the reading and explain their choice
- Pose a series of questions that you want students to think about as they read and ask them to bring written responses to the next class
- Have students respond in writing to an in-class prompt the next day and then use the prompt for class discussion
- Before reading ask students to write: what do you know about this topic? What questions do you have? After reading, ask: what did you learn that you didn't expect to learn? What questions do you have now?
Motivate careful reading
Most of today's MTU students are not naturally drawn to reading as a preferred mode of learning, so it is important that the reading material be motivating or that you find ways to motivate the reading by turning it into a problem-solving activity. Set a purpose or a goal for each reading assignment. Tell students what to pay attention to, what to look for, what to notice. Pose a problem or question that the reading addresses.
Model the intellectual work
For particularly challenging reading, consider reading a chapter in class with the students:
- take frequent pauses for discussion
- model the kinds of questions an engaged reader needs to ask
- make the sorts of connections a thoughtful reader makes
- show how an engaged reader uses the preface and/or introduction to determine the author's focus and stance
- show how to use the copyright, information about the author, the table of contents, the index, etc. to make decisions about currency, credibility, scope, accuracy, definitions, etc.
Take advantage of opportunities to use writing to learn (not just writing to show learning)
As a course, Perspectives is supposed to teach students to think in complex ways. Writing can be used to encourage the development of thought. For example, you can ask students to start a freewrite (writing quickly for a defined amount of time to get thoughts on paper without concern about grammar or spelling) in class in response to a prompt question about the subject you are investigating.

Then you ask them to take the freewrite home and develop it into a two-page reflection. A few days later, you can have them read the reflection to classmates and then revise again to deepen and extend and support the most important ideas.

When writing assignments are staged in this way, spread over 7-10 days time, students have more opportunities to work on their ideas with writing coaches.
Structure due dates for writing assignments into your syllabus.
You can always change your deadlines; it's harder to change student behavior after the first six weeks. You want them to get in the habit of looking ahead and working steadily to prepare for peak performance times.

If students know they have an assignment due in ten days, they can begin preparing for it and they can make good use of their resources, including weekly coaching sessions in the Writing Center.

If you build in time for productive discussion prior to writing and for deep revision after writing an initial draft, you'll get better papers. Deep revision can include providing further development, reorganizing, adding more evidence, etc.
Allow for multiple drafts
To achieve a higher quality of writing and thinking in the formal writing assignments, stage a series of draft deadlines in your syllabus. You might schedule an early deadline for peer reviews of drafts, a second deadline for teacher review prior to a final draft that will be graded, a third deadline for collecting and grading final drafts. An oral presentation using visual support might come between the second and third draft. If these are built in the syllabus, students will be encouraged to manage time effectively.
Put guidelines for each major assignment in writing
Remember the point about being explicit? Don't count on students to remember oral directions. Prepare an assignment sheet that explains the kind of thinking you want them to do in each major writing assignment. Try to answer most of the following questions:
- What are your goals for the assignment?
- How do these goals connect with the course goals?
- What should their purpose be in doing the assignment?
- Who are they writing for? (audience and context)
- What do they need to do to get an A? Do they need to state premises clearly? Justify conclusions? Use course material to develop a definition? Use only reputable sources? Use a certain number or kinds of sources? Connect their argument with one of the recent class readings or discussions? Make an argument or inform?
Provide feedback on student writing that encourages revision.
When responding to students' writing, comment on the sophistication of their rguments, the quality of their evidence, the keenness of their analysis, the complexity of the thinking, the readability of the prose, the use of evidence, the quality of the research. Push students to achieve a higher level of thought rather than accept mediocre insubstantial papers. Push students to use evidence to support their judgments rather than offer unsubstantiated opinions. Probably the most important goal of the course is for students to learn to examine ideas, to analyze arguments, and to provide evidence for their thinking.

If your comments focus only on surface features (spelling and punctuation), then students tend to think that's what you value. They'll become more concerned about having a correct paper than a thoughtful one.
Use grading rubrics
When giving writing assignments, provide a rubric for grading. (Some example rubrics will be shared during the fall workshop and on the website.) Rubrics make it clear to students that they are accountable for more than correct spelling and punctuation. Rubrics incorporate your expectations for each assignment and indicate the progress students made toward achieving them.
Respond to students' work in ways that challenge them to think some more.
For example, you can ask them to find more evidence, to consider alternative perspectives, to define key terms, to deepen their analysis, to consider the appropriateness of their focus, to develop their ideas more thoroughly, etc. Putting these suggestions in writing increases their impact.
Make frequent reference to the goals of the course.
Students frequently lose track of the reason they are taking Perspectives. They think that they are studying a particular subject rather than learning how to think. Take frequent opportunities to discuss the ways that your classroom practices, reading materials, and assignments are helping students achieve the stated goals of Perspectives. Help them see how your course prepares them for college-level work.
Plan ways to get all students talking regularly.
Alternate between large and small group discussion. Do round-the-room comments where everyone has a time to speak. Before discussion, ask students to write briefly in response to your questions to allow more introverted students (often the majority of Tech students) time to think before talking.
Use the expertise of the library staff.
Plan a library visit early in the term to introduce students to resources they can use for your class. Contact the Library Instruction Coordinator, David Bezotte, to make these arrangements (487-3041 or dbezotte@mtu.edu).

The library component of Perspectives supports the course's goal of encouraging intellectual habits that will serve the students in their academic careers and beyond. Within the context of their section, students are given strategies for thinking critically about information, skills for finding relevant and authoritative information, the ability to use information in a variety of formats, and an awareness of authorship and plagiarism issues surrounding the use of information.

The library instructional staff works with Perspective's instructors on many levels including one-on-one assistance, course-integrated instruction, providing research guides, and collaborating with instructors in preparing effective research assignments.
Support the MTU Writing Center's efforts to work with your students.
About one fifth of first-year students will have regular weekly appointments with Writing Center coaches. To support the coaches who work with your students, please send a paper copy of your syllabus and your writing assignment sheets to Jill Hodges, Administrative Coordinator, MTU Writing Center. These will be filed under your name so that writing coaches who are working with your students can learn about your course--your focus, your goals, your expectations for particular assignments, your deadlines, and more.

Encourage your students to use writing center walk-in hours, posted on the web at http://www.hu.mtu.edu/wc/. Plan to remind them about 7 times, but please don't require all of them to use the Writing Center for the same assignment. They'll wait till the last minute, descend en masse on the lone walk-in coach 15 minutes before she has to go to class herself. Lots of frustration ensues. Coaches work with students one at a time, and they try to give each student personal attention and each draft a careful reading. They will not "sign off" on a student's paper, however, because they can only make suggestions for improvement. Please call or email Nancy Grimm, Writing Center Director, for more information about the MTU Writing Center. (ngrimm@mtu.edu; 487-3265)

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These guidelines are brought to you courtesy of the Perspectives Committee and the staff of the MTU Writing Center and the Director of General Education.

May 2003 (Contact information update September 2008.)