CU:

A Colorado Challenge

A Colorado Challenge - Memo #4

Last Spring ASC constituted a Task Force group to examine areas of our undergraduate curriculum that might benefit from attention as part of the Colorado Challenge that I had initiated the year before. The Task Force deliberated and reported to me several recommendations that they concluded would be fruitful areas in which to focus faculty attention. I thank them for their attention to this matter. I would like to share a few of these recommendations with you and ask that your curriculum committee discuss these and determine whether or not your unit's undergraduate curriculum would benefit from attention in these areas.

1. Maintaining Curricular Integration: A unit's curricular offerings tend to evolve over time as faculty come and go from particular courses, and as the discipline itself evolves. Ideally that evolution is deliberate and directional, but in reality courses sometimes change without close consideration of the introductory courses that precede them, or the more advanced coursework that follows. The Task Force recommends that units take time to re-examine whether or not the content and goals of key courses within the core curriculum and in the major are as well articulated as they are often assumed to be. Recent case studies on our campus suggest that the highly sequential content of the introductory courses in the sciences are prone to this content drift. Unit curriculum committees are urged to examine the integration of courses that are central to its undergraduate curriculum. One unit surveyed its students to identify these articulation problems and discovered that the students identified a high degree of unnecessary redundancy in its sequenced courses.

2. Similarity of Multiple-Sectioned and Frequently Taught Courses: Large courses offered in multiple sections taught by different faculty members, and small trailing courses taught in residence halls or continuing education, often exhibit large discrepancies in content, workload, and particularly grading practices. The Task Force's strongest recommendation was that departments develop content, workload, and grading guidelines to assure an acceptable level of similarity in these courses when they are taught by a rotating cast of faculty, or taught in your department's name but through different academic units. Some units have addressed this issue by developing textbook, writing, and grading guidelines for particular courses or groups of courses. It is well within a unit's prerogatives to do so.

3. Stricter Enforcement of Prerequisites: The Task Force observed that stricter enforcement of essential prerequisites is perhaps the single best way to protect the rigor, or elevate the rigor, of our upper division course work. The sophistication of our upper division coursework is probably the most important determinant of how well trained our graduates are when they enter the workplace or graduate school. Our current SIS system is capable only of flagging on rosters students who may not satisfy prerequisites. The next generation software will do better, but it is still multiple years away and will not be highly accurate initially because of transfer course work carried to Boulder by many of our students. However, faculty members, with the support of colleagues in their unit, can use the existing roster flags to administratively remove students who upon transcript scrutiny and interviewing do not appear to have the proper preparation for advanced coursework. It may well be that some additional effort at the front end of some courses will pay dividends later in the course, when complex material can be discussed without extensive tutorials and introduction.

4. Orientation of Short-term Instructional Faculty: Many departments rely on lecturers, instructors, or GPTIs who may be new to the department or to the courses they are assigned. Even veteran part-time instructors often have never benefited from faculty meeting discussions of standards and expectations. The Task Force found little evidence of training or orientation of these short-term instructional faculty to the pedagogical standards and grading guidelines of the department. It was recommended that unit curriculum committees develop guidelines in these areas for these temporary colleagues, and make those guidelines known and available to those teaching the unit's courses.

5. Sharing Common Data: Finally, the Task Force advised me to make available to units data on how their grading standards and workload expectations compare to other units in the College. These data have always been available on the PBA website, but I shall start making a practice of sharing with units these data in printed form on a regular basis. Your Associate Dean will also receive this information so as to better address questions of comparative expectations across cognate departments.

The Colorado Challenge was meant to stimulate an ongoing conversation at the department and program level about the quality of our undergraduate education. Curriculum is the responsibility of the faculty, and the best locus of that conversation is at the primary unit level. I join the Task Force members in encouraging your curriculum committee to discuss the five points above, and decide whether addressing any or all of them will result in a better educational experience for our students and a better instructional environment for our faculty and graduate students. We also hope that in this process you will identify your best practices and continue to share your ideas with us for improving the academic climate of our College. In the Spring the Task Force and I will be interested to learn what progress your unit has made and what best practices should be shared with other units.

Colorado Challenge Task Force Members: