Meaningful Course Revision: Enhancing Academic Engagement Using Student Learning Data

Faculty are often motivated to change the activities and design of their courses for reasons not based on data. In Meaningful Course Revision, the author seeks instead to illustrate how the appropriate use of multiple, direct measures of student-learning outcomes can lead to enhanced course development and revision. While providing an outline of methods for creating significant learning experiences, the book also includes practical suggestions for shaping the design of a course to meet student needs.

Meaningful Course Revision urges a rethinking of teaching and learning. By making student advancement its focal point, it offers guidance through

• Data-based decision making
• Designing course-based assessment activities
• Using data to enhance innovation in course redesign
• Rethinking teaching and learning
• Embedding assessment activities in meaningful ways
• Planning the course
• Closing the feedback loop
• Moving from course-level decision making to departmental curriculum planning
• Creating a culture of student-learning outcomes assessment

Written for faculty seeking advice on how to keep their teaching interesting and effective, Meaningful Course Revision is a practical guide for collecting information about how well students are reaching course goals, learning what impact course changes are having on student learning, and putting courses into a cycle of continual revision and improvement.