EDU497

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and Health Care Settings

Fall 2018
Lead instructors: Raffaella Borasi & Dave Miller

Contents:
Lead instructor’s Contact Information and Availability
Brief Course Description
Technology Requirements
Course Goals
Key Assessments and Long-Term Projects
Key Design Elements
Learning Modules
Course Requirements and Expectations
Learning Assessment and Grading

Lead Instructors’ Contact Information and Availability

Dave Miller’s e-mail: dmiller@warner.rochester.edu

Dave Miller’s phone #: (585) 340-7557
Dave Miller’s virtual office hours: by appointment

Raffaella Borasi’s e-mail: rborasi@warner.rochester.edu

Class meeting time: September 6 8:00 am – 1 pm; September 7 8:00 am – 3:00 pm, plus most
Mondays, 4:50-7:30 pm (9/24; 10/08; 10/15; 10/22; 10/29; 11/12; 11/19; 11/26; 12/10) (See Course
Schedule in BB for detail and most updated information)

Brief Course Description

This course is part of a set of three core courses that are required for all students in health
professions education programs – although it is also open to other interested students. It is designed
to introduce students to fundamental research-based principles of learning and teaching adults, with
a special emphasis on applications in higher education and health professions education. The focus
of the course is on developing awareness of teaching, learning, and assessment practices that
facilitate meaningful learning, while also developing some basic skills in designing and delivering
instruction that takes advantage of relevant instructional technologies.

This course is offered as a hybrid-online course, so as to enable students to personally experience

several different types of synchronous and online learning activities outside of class, and how they
can be integrated with in-class and other face-to-face activities.

No prior experience with online learning or instructional technology, either as a student or a teacher,
is required to participate in this course.

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The design of this course has been informed by the overarching essential question “What does it
mean and what does it take to effectively orchestrate digitally-rich learning experiences for adult
learners?”, along with the following sub-questions:
1. What does it mean and what does it take to be a Health Professions Educator?
2. What kinds of learning experiences can leverage how people learn best?
3. What design approaches and principles should inform the planning of effective learning
experiences?
4. What “high-leverage teaching practices” could be used to most affect the success of
digitally-rich learning and teaching (DRTL) experiences, and what does it take to learn
them?
5. How does one go about actually designing and implementing an online module for adults?
6. What does it take to design and facilitate DTL experiences successfully?

Technology Requirements

To make sure students have all the necessary technology to actively participate in all aspects of this
hybrid-online course, we have identified below all the hardware and software needed to fully
participate in both synchronous and asynchronous course activities:

o Access to Mac or PC-based Computer with:

• High Speed Internet capability
• Speakers, microphone and a video cam
• Adobe Reader
• Plug-ins for your preferred browser to play videos
• Latest version of Java installed for your preferred browser
o Tablet and/or laptop with internet connection to be taken to each class session

Please verify that you meet all these technology requirements (and test them to make sure they work)
before our first class meeting.

Course Goals

The course has been designed to enable students to (a) come to appreciate the potential of
digitally-rich teaching and learning (DTL) for health professions education, and (b) design and
implement effective “digitally-rich” learning experiences (using a few specific digital tools).

More specifically, by the end of the course, students will:

1. Appreciate the importance and complexity of health professions education

(so as to inform and motivate their learning of the contents specific to this course)

2. Be aware of fundamental principles, along with their research basis and instructional
implications, within the following complementary areas:
a) Motivation
b) How people learn best, and implications for teaching approaches
c) Instructional design
d) Student assessment
e) High-impact teaching practices
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 (so as to be able to design DTL learning experiences that can effectively lead to specific
desired outcomes and truly engage students in meaningful and effective ways)

3. Become aware of and be able to use a few “high-impact teaching practices,” in both face-to-face
and online contexts, including:
a. Eliciting and building on students’ prior knowledge
b. Synthesizing learning
c. Conveying content to students
d. Sharing students’ work
e. Providing directions for independent work
f. Providing feedback to student work
g. Orchestrating group work
(so as to be able to effectively facilitate learning experiences that take full advantage of these
practices, as most appropriate given the established learning goals)

4. Be able to use (as an instructor as well as a student) a select number of digital tools and
technologies, strategically-chosen to allow for valuable DTL activities (so as to be able to design
innovative DTL learning experiences, while taking advantage of only a minimum number of
digital tools)

5. Engage in scaffolded experiences of designing and implementing “digitally-rich” learning

experiences.
(so as to be able to design and facilitate a variety of high quality DTL activities by the end of the
course)

Key Assessments and Long-Term Projects

A. Group Project (assessing goals 3-5): As their first major “experience as teachers”, students will
be assigned to small groups and given the task to design and implement an online learning
module for the rest of the class on an assigned topic related to the course topic – which will be
considered to be an integral part of the course learning experience. This first teaching experience
will be supported by the instructors in various concrete ways, including some direct participation
in the planning as well as providing “just in time instruction” about relevant digital tools as
needed. Students will also participate as learners in at least two of these learning modules and
provide thoughtful feedback to the “teachers.” The group that originally designs each learning
module will then be expected to revise the design of their module taking this feedback into
consideration – so as to provide a complete cycle of instructional design in this first experience
as teachers.

B. Individual Project (goals 3-5): As their second “experience as teachers”, and a culminating
performance assessment for the course, each student will design an “instructional unit” on a topic
of their choice and for an audience of their choice. Using Understanding by Design as a
framework, each student will be expected to prepare a plan that articulates (a) their goals for the
unit and related desired results/student outcomes, (b) essential questions informing the unit, (c)
the key assessment(s) that will allow them to measure whether the desired results have been
achieved, and (d) a set of learning experiences students will engage in to achieve their stated
goals, along with the rationale for selecting those activities. Each student will also develop a
detailed plan for a specific lesson/segment of the unit, including the development/ identification
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 of all the instructional materials needed to teach that lesson/segment. Students will be supported
throughout this process by a “thinking partner” – another student in the class with whom they
can brainstorm ideas and request feedback throughout the planning process. NOTE: Given the
course time constraints, students will not be expected to implement their plan.

C. Journals and Final Reflection (goals 1-5): At the end of each learning module, each participant
will be asked to record their main takeaways about the essential question informing the module
(as captured in each module’s title below) in a journal on Blackboard. At the end of the course,
each participant will also write a Final Reflection Paper, where they will reflect on what they
learned in the course as a whole, using their journals both as evidence and as a means to help
their reflection.

Key Design Elements

We believe that it is critical to engage teachers in “experiences as learners” of any innovative

instructional approach they are asked to adopt. Therefore, this course was purposefully designed to
“model” a variety of DTL experiences that teachers could consider using in their own practice. So,
as students in this course will learn about principles of learning, motivation, instructional design,
etc., we will make full use of many different DTL activities – both in class and online – and reflect
on these experiences afterwards. These reflections will aim to identify not only the extent to which
these activities were successful in promoting learning, but also the diverse reactions of individual
learners to the experience.

The literature on learning complex skills/practices (such as teaching – whether face-to-face, online,
or in technology-rich environments) suggests that individuals can learn such skills best by engaging
in the following scaffolded sequence of experiences:
a. Observing an expert engaged in the practice (possibly with the opportunity to ask questions
about what is taking place and why).
b. Participating in limited ways (“legitimate peripheral participation”) in the performance of the
targeted practice in authentic contexts under the guidance of an expert.
c. Engaging in the targeted practice independently, yet still benefiting from some support and
feedback.

The “DTL experiences as learners” developed in the course will play the role of engaging our
students in the observation of expert practice identified as the first critical step of this process.
Given the constraints of a semester-long course, we are limited with respect to the extent we will be
able to implement the other two components of this model. However, we have designed two
“scaffolded experience as teachers” as part of this course – the Group Project and the Individual
Project, as described earlier.

Course Learning Modules

NOTE: Some of these modules overlap, as shown in the course schedule document

MODULE 1: SETTING THE STAGE

What does it mean and what does it take to be a Health Professions Educator? (8/30-9/06 –
including ~2 weeks asynchronous work + full day session on Sept. 6)
This first module is intended to develop expectations and motivation for the entire set of HPE core
courses, as well as build the foundations for its learning community. Participants will engage in a
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first set of multimedia readings and class activities introducing various aspects of health professions
education (with a focus on interprofessional education) and teaching in higher education more
generally. To begin to develop shared images of high-quality DTL activities, participants will
engage together in some “DTL experiences as learners” as part of the day-long face-to-face session
as well as the asynchronous online component of this module. Information about the course as well
as the other HPE core courses will be provided in this beginning module, so participants will know
what to expect and can plan accordingly. Participants will also begin to contribute to an on-going
online discussion on Health Professions Education as a Facebook Secret Group – as a way to create
a more open-ended and student-center space for their reflections and online interactions, and also to
enable them to experience a more “social media like” way to engage online. Participants will be
asked to write two journal entries in this module: a first one before doing anything else to be used as
a “baseline,” and another at the end of the module to summarize their main take-aways about the
essential question informing this module, that is What does it mean and what does it take to be a
Health Professions Educator?.

MODULE 2: LEARNING & MOTIVATION

What kinds of learning experiences can leverage how people learn best? (9/8-9/24 – Full day
session on Sept. 7 + 2 weeks asynchronous work + closure at the beginning of 9/24 class session)
The potential impact of a DTL activity on student learning will greatly depend on the overall
approach to learning and instruction that informs it. High-quality DTL activities need to be student-
centered, involve activities at the high end of Bloom taxonomy, focus on “big ideas” in a field, and
be meaningful and engaging for the specific group of students involved. In this module participants
will first of all engage as learners in a complex learning activity designed to model inquiry-based
learning, and then reflect on this experience. Students will also re-examine some of the experiences
they engaged in so far in the course using the motivation and learning theories they are learning
about as lenses. This will be done mostly by engaging in an online asynchronous module carefully
designed to revisit fundamental principles about motivation, learning and pedagogy – thus also
providing an opportunity to “experience as learners” a fully online asynchronous module and then
reflecting on this experience.

MODULE 3: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN & ASSESSMENT

What design approaches and principles should inform the planning of effective learning
experiences? (9/25-10/08 – launched during 9/24 class session + 2 weeks asynchronous work +
closure at the beginning of 10/08 class session)
While in the previous modules participants were mostly asked to take on the learner role, focusing
on the nature of the learning experiences they engaged in and what makes them most effective, in
this module they will begin to question what it takes for a teacher to create such experiences. Just as
quality DTL experiences need to reflect how people learn best, the planning of these activities must
be informed by sound principles of instructional design. Participants will first examine the learning
tasks they engaged in as part of Module 2, using Bloom taxonomy as a way to evaluate the cognitive
demands of different tasks. Participants will then be introduced to Understanding by Design (UbD)
as an instructional design approach that is particularly powerful for designing effective DTL learning
lessons and units. UbD will be used as a framework to examine the planning process behind the
learning experiences the students themselves experienced in the course so far, so as to become aware
of key instructional decisions the course instructors had to make and how they approached these
decisions. Participants will be provided with additional tools to design effective assessments and
learning activities in the context of a follow-up asynchronous module, while also being asked to
apply what they have learned to a specific lesson/unit. Both the Group Project and the Individual

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Project will be launched at this point, so they can be used as an authentic context for some of these
activities.

MODULE 4: TEACHING PRACTICES

What “high-leverage teaching practices” could be used to most affect the success of DRTL
experiences, and what does it take to learn them? (10/09-10/22 – Launched during 10/08 class
session + 1 week asynchronous work + part of synchronous session on 10/15 +1 week asynchronous
work + closure at the beginning of 10/22 class session)
The Learning to Teach literature has begun to recognize the importance for novice teachers to focus
on developing a (relatively small) set of “high-leverage teaching practices,” strategically chosen
among those most likely to affect their success in the classroom according to research. As part of
the previous three modules, participants will have “experienced as learners” a number of these
teaching practices, in the context of both in-class and out-of-class activities. These high-leverage
practices will have included at a minimum: (a) Eliciting and building on students’ prior knowledge;
(b) Synthesizing learning; (c) Conveying content to students; (d) Sharing students’ work; (e)
Providing directions for independent work; (f) Providing feedback to student work; and (g)
Orchestrating group work. To empower participants to learn how to set up for and effectively
implement these practices in their own teaching, they will engage in a systematic analysis of key
decision points, options and “instructional tips” related to each practice. The insights resulting from
this analysis will be recorded “Practice Analysis documents” that all students in the class can benefit
from even after the course ends. NOTE: Concurrently with this module, students will have started
working on their Group Project; some class-time will be provided on both 10/08, 10/15 and 10/22
for group work.

MODULE 5: GROUP PROJECT

How does one go about actually designing and implementing an online module for adults?
(10/08-11/12, overlapping somewhat with Modules 4 and 6 – including some classtime on 10/08,
10/15, 10/22, 10/29 and 11/12 plus asynchronous work)
During the 10/08 face-to-face class meeting, some class time will be set aside for groups to finalize
the scope and nature of their module, and part of the independent work the following week will be
devoted by each group to planning activities. Each group will have another opportunity to plan
together as part of a synchronous online session on 10/12, as well as to benefit from questions and
insights from other groups. Part of the 10/22 class meeting will be spent in a group meeting with one
of the instructors to review a preliminary plan for the module, so that plans can be finalized and all
the needed online materials be prepared over the following week, as well as to introduce BB tools
that may be useful for the planned modules. On 10/29 groups will have the option to come to a lab
to complete the posting of the online materials with the support of the instructors. The first set of
week-long asynchronous modules designed by the groups will be implemented 10/30-11/04, and the
second set from 11/05 to 11/10. Each week, the students who are NOT facilitating a module will be
taking two of the modules offered by other groups that week. At the end of all modules, students will
provide feedback to each other and be asked to revise their modules.

MODULE 6: REVISITING + INDIVIDUAL PROJECT

What does it take to design and facilitate DTL experiences successfully? (revisited) (11/12-12/10–
including some classtime on 11/12, 11/19 and 11/26, and independent asynchronous work in-
between these class sessions including the Individual Project and Final Reflection)
This module will conclude the course by revisiting in more depth and pulling together key themes
addressed in the course, while also applying and extended what they learned in their Individual
Project (see Assessment section for a more detailed description). Students will have begun to think

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about their Individual Project earlier in the course, but will truly focus on it after the conclusion of
their Group Project (so as to benefit from that experience); each student will work on designing their
chosen unit/lesson independently, but with a “thinking partner” to share ideas and get feedback
throughout the process (with some classtime – both face-to-face and online -- devoted to this pair
work). Parallel to this work, students will revisit selected readings and engage in discussions about
what it takes to design and facilitate successful DTL experience – informed by their first “experience
as DTL teacher” in the Group Project, as well as motivated by the challenges they may be
encountering in the execution of their Inidividual Project. Some classtime at the end will be devoted
to reflections about specific aspects of their experience in the course. As a way to bring closure to
the course, students will also complete their Final Reflection paper (after reviewing the journal
entries they wrote at the end of each Module – see Assessment section for a more detailed
description). The final face-to-face class session on 12/10 will provide students with an opportunity
to share some of these highlights, as well as their overall feedback on the course – so as to enable the
instructors to revise it for future offerings.

Course Requirements and Expectations

Weekly Independent Work

A variety of independent learning tasks (involving reading, writing as well as other kinds of
activities) will need to be completed within each module, with specific intermediate deadlines, as
articulated in detail in the “Directions for Independent Work” posted at the beginning of each
Learning Module in the course Blackboard site. These tasks must be completed on time, as the
following class session and/or subsequent tasks will often make use of them.
These tasks will be organized every week (or couple of weeks) in a “Learning Module” posted on
BB, and will usually involve a combination of:
• “Readings” – where the documents to be read are not only traditional texts, but could also include
videos, narrated PowerPoints, websites, etc. All required readings will be accessible online in
Blackboard.
• Assignments – these may involve writing as well as other kinds of tasks, and often result in a
product that needs to be submitted online on Blackboard – either privately as an assignment that
will be accessible only to the instructor, or publicly by posting them in a specific discussion board,
as directed in each case by the instructor. Unless they are part of one of the major projects (as
described earlier), these assignments are not intended to result in finished nor polished reports.
Therefore, students will not receive a letter grade for most assignments, although they will be
assigned points for satisfactory completion that will affect the final grade in the course (as
explained later in the Course Assessment section of this syllabus).
• Unstructured conversations in a Facebook Secret Group – students will also be expected to
engage online with classmates on an on-going basis on issues related to Health Professions
Education by spontaneously contributing their reflections and insights in a more unstructured and
student-centered way using a Facebook Secret Group.
• Reflective Journal entries – at the end of each learning module, students will also be asked to
synthesize the key learning and insights gained from that module’s readings and other learning
activities in a private journal, in response to an “essential question” posed by the instructor
(although students are always encouraged to add additional observations and insights). Unlike
contributions posted in Discussion Boards and social media, these journal entries will be accessible

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 only to the student and the instructor. Students are expected to take advantage of and build on
these journal entries in preparing their Final Reflection Paper at the end of the course.

Class Participation
The success of this course, and the extent of each student’s learning, will depend on his/her full and
timely participation. Thus, we expect that students will attend all the synchronous as well as face-to-
face class sessions, actively participate in discussion boards and other types on interactive online
spaces, and meet the established deadlines for each assignment. In case you are unable to do so in a
specific week, please let Dave Miller know in advance and as soon as possible. Lack of
participation in face-to-face classes, synchronous sessions, discussion boards or other interactive
online assignments will result in missing class participation points, unless particular make-up
arrangements have been made with the instructor ahead of time. Most importantly, it will take away
not only from your own learning in the course, but also from that of your classmates!

Major Projects
As culminating learning experiences and summative assessments, you will be expected to complete
the following four “major projects” (as already described in the previous Key Assessments section):
1. Group Project
2. Independent Project.
3. Final Reflection.
Detailed directions for each of these projects can be found in Blackboard.
Each of the “major projects” should show the student’s “best work” and will be graded according to
a rubric, provided along with the detailed description of the assignment.

Course Schedule/Timeline

An agenda for each class session and a list of key tasks to be completed independently in-between
each class session can be found in the Course Schedule section of BB (directly accessible on the
left-side Menu). This document will be continuously updated to reflect any scheduling changes that
may occur in the course of the semester (although we expect these changes, if any, to be minor and
rare).

However, please make sure you mark the following times on your calendar for face-to-face or
synchronous sessions:
• September 6, 8:00-1:00 pm and September 7 8:00-3:00 pm
• Mondays 4:50 – 7:30 pm from 9/24 to 12/10 except for the first Monday of each month

Workload expectations
According to New York State Education Department, a 3-credit course should include a total of
about 35 “contact” hours, plus at least about twice as many hours of independent work on the part of
each student, for a total commitment of over 100 hours on the part of each student. Despite its
unusual schedule, this course meets the NYSED minimum of 35 “contact hours”, while also
expecting about twice as many hours of independent work also for weeks when the class does not
meet face-to-face. Therefore, it is important that students set aside a total of at least 8 hours each
week for a combination of class time and independent work.

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Additional considerations about online learning

Taking a course with online components requires somewhat different practices than traditional face-
to-face courses in order to achieve the same learning goals and outcomes. Especially if you have
never taken an online course before, we recommend that you read the “Considerations for Student
Success in Online Courses” available on BB.

One thing in particular that we would like students in this course to keep in mind is that, in order to
ensure interactions among students as required by specific tasks assigned as part of their independent
work each week, there may be multiple deadlines to submit assignments each week.

Learning Assessment and Grading

Half of your grade in the course will be based on class participation and weekly assignments, and the
other half on your performance on the three major projects. More specifically:
• Class participation: 15% (based on points assigned to active participation in each face-to-face
class/synchronous session attended, as well as to the on-going contributions to the “open” online
conversations occurring in the Facebook Secret Group)
• Weekly assignments (including discussion boards and reflective journal entries): 40% (based
on points assigned for completing each assignment on time and satisfactorily, as indicated in the
Directions for Independent Work for each learning module)
• Group Project: 15% (based on quality of the product, rubrics-based)
• Individual Project: 20% (based on overall quality of the product, rubrics-based)
• Final Reflection: 10% (based on quality of the product, rubrics-based)

For a complete and updated list of the maximum number of points associated to specific
assignments and other components of the course, see the “Course grading scheme” document
posted within the General Information Folder on Blackboard.

Grading scheme:
A: 95-100%; A-: 90-94%; B+: 87-89%; B: 83-86%; B-: 80-82%;C: 70-79%; E: <70