Course Mentoring: Toward Achieving Consistency in the Curriculum
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Transcript of Course Mentoring: Toward Achieving Consistency in the Curriculum
Course Mentoring: Toward Achieving
Consistency in the Curriculum
Lucia DettoriSchool of CTI – DePaul University
Joint work with Amber Settle
ISECON November 4, 2004
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Outline
CTI 101 Who are we? Why do we need course mentors? The mentor’s responsibilities The technology Did it work? Where do we go from here?
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C T I 101: some faCToIds
Computer Science Telecommunication Information Systems
Founded 1996
30 FT faculty20 PT faculty
1800 students
80 sections/quarter
Currently 2004
80 FT faculty100 PT faculty
3500+ students
250 sections/quarter
Fall 02: 22 sections of Java 1
CTI’s degrees at a glance
13 BA/BS
14 MS/MA
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Content consistency : a must
Vertical nature of IT degreesJava 2 builds on Java 1 …
Shared introductory coursesDB1 serves CS, IS, NT …
Evolution of course content
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Content consistency: a challenge
Multiple sections
Use of part time instructors in introductory courses
First time instructor of the specific course
Propagating content changes
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Who is in charge? CTI structure
Faculty
1 Dean4 Associate Deans
UndergraduateCurriculumCommittee
GraduateCurriculumCommittee
Program CommitteesCS,IS,NT,IT,ECT,CGA,GAM,DC
“Cloud 9”
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Rules for a successful solution
Scalable Easily extendable to many courses
Distributed/decentralized One person can’t do it all Multi-campus school
Flexible 5/13 BS degrees were introduced in the last
year, one more this year. New courses will need monitoring
Rewards/incentives
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Course Mentors : the idea
Critical courses are assigned a course mentor
The course mentor is a fulltime faculty who has taught the course recently
Course mentor serves for a year for the purpose of continuity
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The mentor’s responsibilities
Hold a pre and post-quarter meeting with all instructors
Populate and maintain a SharePoint website for the course
Be a proactive contact person for tech-staff
Give feedback about the course to the appropriate committees
IS315 Analysis & Design
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The Share Point Course sites
The basics• Syllabus, week-by-week course coverage• Course guidelines, positioning of the course
Course material• Lecture notes, PPT, tutorials, links• Case studies, good examples• Assessment material, GAE
Discussion board
CSC211 Java Programming 1
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If you build it will they come?
Over 60 course sites with the bare minimum were created
50% of the courses identified as needing a mentors got one
Active mentors made a difference First time instructor Spotting problems early (Codelab)
Relying on volunteers alone will not work in the long run
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Cost neutral incentives
Fat bullet points (->money): the personnel committee has agreed to recognize mentoring as “going beyond the call of duty”
Teach what you want (->time): you are guaranteed to teach the course you are mentoring or any other you want
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Where do we go from here
Improve functionalities of the site Add search tools Go beyond the “lecture” view, tied
material to learning goals instead Move to a database driven system
Improve usability to facilitate use by other departments (Math, PSY, …)
Develop a metric of incentives agreeable to the administration.