Guide to Core Course Approval

Below are examples of sentences that show the intent to develop the Way of Knowing in a course description.

• Students are invited into understanding and using the discipline of sociology as a mode of inquiry.
• Students develop confidence in using the scientific method and lab processes.
• Students are provided with the opportunity to use the historical method, including primary sources, to understand and write accounts of the past. 

Ensure the description of the course goes beyond content to include ‘way of knowing’ processes and the opportunity for personal inquiry.

You could also include some essential or guiding questions of the discipline in the course description and describe how students will be invited into these over-arching discipline questions. Inquiry is question driven, rather than topic driven.

Inquiry is a process requiring students to move through most levels of Blooms Taxonomy.  Therefore, your course learning outcomes should show evidence that the student is being brought through the full taxonomy.

Common inquiry verbs for beginning learning outcomes include the following:

• Gather evidence…
• Investigate
• Analyze
• Interpret
• Hypothesize
• Construct
• Formulate
• Design
• Create
• Evaluate

It is very appropriate to have learning outcomes that build foundational remembering and understanding, but inquiry learning outcomes should also show opportunities for applying, analysing, evaluating, reflecting and creating.

The TWU Learning Outcome categories are helpful in considering the opportunities you have for these kinds of outcomes. If your learning outcomes are mapped to the categories, you will find that you are using Bloom’s Taxonomy.  If all of your outcomes are mapped to knowledge and its application, you are probably not using an inquiry approach.

See the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs, below, as a resource.

The following are common characteristics1Many of the above features are taken from, Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment (Drake, Reid, Kolohon, 2013) and Inquiry-Based Learning for Faculty and Institutional Development (Blessinger & Carfora, Eds., 2014). of inquiry based approaches to pedagogy/methodology:

• Inquiry/Question Driven– Students are encouraged to ask and explore meaningful questions through an in-depth inquiry.   The curriculum is question driven rather than topic driven.  Students are coached to ask their own personal, but high quality, researchable questions.
• Student voice – Students share the results of deep learning with each other, the community, and/or online.
• Audience – Students craft their messages appropriately for an appropriate, authentic target audience, and are coached in how to do this.
• Community– Students collaborate with others on projects that matter.
• Leadership – Students are given opportunities to lead the learning.
• Exploration and Investigation – Students are encouraged to experiment, problem solve, design and create, using a model of inquiry suitable to the discipline or way of knowing.
• Technology – Students use a wide variety of media and technology to learn.
• Contextualized and Situated – in situ learning, field learning, service learning, case studies.
• Challenge, Rigor with Structure and Support – Professors make decisions about the appropriate balance of challenge and rigor, as well as, necessary structure and support, selecting from a wide variety of teaching strategies.
• Co-design – Students co-design the learning experience with professors.
• Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity – Students are encouraged to make connections across disciplines or collaborate across disciplines to solve transdisciplinary questions or explore transdisciplinary questions and problems.
• Student engagement – Professors often choose a resonating theme,  question or problem to trigger the learning.
• Competency emphasis – Inquiry competencies are intentionally built along side content to support understanding and communication of learning.
• Instructor Modeling –  Students draw on the expertise of the instructor and the instructor intentionally models the way of knowing, describing their own metacognitive processes, and inviting learners into the process.  Content becomes a vehicle for this modeling.

Not all inquiry based courses will feature all of these characteristics, and not all will feature the characteristics to the same degree.  However, it should be evident that instructors are moving along two continuums – Delivery (from directed to open) and Approach (from faculty centered to student centered).

Backwards design2Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J.  (2005).  Understanding by design. 2^nd Ed.  Alexandria: VA: ASCD. is a process of curriculum design that starts with essential questions, arising from the big ideas and enduring understandings of the discipline, and processes of inquiry important to exploring/answering those questions.  The course learning outcomes flow from these two areas.  Professors then think of how best to have students show they have explored these questions acquired these processes through assessment assignments/projects/research papers or presentations/performances.

The organizational framework for your course then becomes focused on exploring the chosen essential questions and coaching the inquiry processes, keeping in mind the assessment strategies you’ve chosen, and scaffolding the learning along the way.

In other words, an inquiry courses shows strong connection between learning outcomes, course organization and culminating/summative assessment strategies.

A good first step is to think about the kinds questions that are relevant or resonant to your course.  Using something like the “Cognitive Rigor Question Framework”, based on the Hess model of cognitive rigor which combines Blooms Revised Taxonomy with Webb’s Depth of Knowledge scale.

The Question Framework, developed by Erik Francis3Francis, E.M. (2016). Now that’s a good question!: How to promote cognitive rigor through classroom questioning.  Alexandria, VA: ASCD. can help you select appropriate questions for your students and support them in developing their own questions.  Francis categorizes four kinds of essential questions (universal, overarching, topical, and driving) with other questions types (factual, analytical, reflective, hypothetical, argumentative, affective and personal).

As indicated above in the discussion about Backwards Design, courses will normally choose 2 or 3 culminating/summative assessment strategies (as well as formative assignments that lead towards these culminating strategies) that address the learning outcomes and require the ‘way of knowing’ competencies to complete.  However, these strategies cannot just be assigned (especially in a 1^st or 2^nd year course), they need to be taught in an intentional manner with opportunities for formative self-assessment and peer assessment (descriptive in relation to criteria, not graded).  Students will normally be assessed on the quality of their content, as well as, the competencies required for creating the product/paper/performance etc. Rubrics are handed out in advance and students use these rubrics for self and peer assessment on formative pieces of the assignment.

The culminating assessment strategies will most normally take the form of a substantial project or research paper/presentation or performance, and focus on a personal interest question or real-world problem.  Often students will be invited to share their inquiry findings with an appropriate audience.

Students are invited to understand and achieve high standards for the way of knowing and are involved in the assessment process.  Discipline or Way of Knowing Standards are often shared in the form of well-constructed rubric that can be used more than once, or from course to course in that way of knowing, to support growth in developing process competencies.

You may want to include a sample of a rubric you will use for one of your culminating/summative projects or assignments.