Recently, I read Taking Student Success Seriously in the College Classroom by Vincent Tinto. Worth reading, especially if you’re new to the “are colleges working?” debate.

I wrote an email to Prof. Tinto about CoreDogs. It’s a decent summary of the CoreDogs Way, so I decided to add it to this blog.

Kieran

——— CUT SCREEN HERE ———

Prof. Tinto,

I just finished reading “Taking Student Success Seriously in the College Classroom.” You make some good points. For years, I have thought that American universities do not meet their obligations to students.

There is a problem I’d like to raise. Some of the changes you suggest require institutional change. For example, you suggest that faculty should assess learning, work together with support staff, and acquire a range of pedagogical skills. This is incompatible with the reward system at my university, and most others. Good research is recognized. Good teaching not at all.

Institutional change is, of course, very difficult. But is there a way to improve teaching outcomes without requiring such change?

Around 2005, I started studying learning science, to improve my own teaching. I teach computer classes in a business school, and was interested in how I could better help students learn skills like database design and Web development. In skills courses, the desired outcome is skill performance. At the end of the course, students should be able to design a database, create a Web site, or whatever.

I found that learning science researchers more-or-less agree on how to help students learn skills. For example:

• When planning a course, start with outcomes, and work backwards to find the facts and procedures needed to create those outcomes. Base the course on those concepts.

• Students should learn the most important concepts in depth, rather than learn a little about many concepts.

• Give students fast, frequent, formative feedback.

• Help students assess their own performance, and know how to eliminate performance deficits.

• Give students access to personal expert help..

In 2007, I started working on what I call the CoreDogs Way, and a Web site to support it. It’s for skills courses in particular. Course operation has three related aspects, two of which are supported by the CoreDogs Web site.

The first aspect of the CoreDogs Way is that there are no lectures. Students work individually through online content. The content is outcome based, focused on core concepts, supports skill learning (e.g., by showing students how to detect, diagnose, and recover from errors), is readable (reducing the cognitive effort needed to interpret text), has “virtual students” who model good student behavior, and has other attributes that support learning.

The second aspect is the powerful feedback system. Although students work through the content independently, they do not work alone. Each student does perhaps 50 exercises throughout a semester. Most exercises are embedded in the text, though some are presented separately to encourage task transfer. Instructors gives students formative feedback about each solution. Students are praised when their solutions are correct. If there are deficiencies, students get suggestions for improvements, and a chance to resubmit.

Strangely, although students are working through a Web site, they may have more one-on-one contact with instructors than they would get in a typical lecture course. Each exercise is an opportunity for a conversation. That might be 50 opportunities for personal connection per semester.

The feedback system makes possible fine-grained monitoring of student progress. Students submit exercise solutions constantly. There is no need to wait until the midterm to find out that a student is struggling, when it is too late to recover. Note that the monitoring tools are available to students as well as faculty.

The feedback system is streamlined. It removes every possible mouse click, keystroke, and cognitive operation. An instructor spending about half an hour per day can keep up with a class of 30 students.

So, the first aspect of the CoreDogs Way is working independently through well-designed content. The second aspect is the powerful feedback system. The last aspect is face-to-face expert help.

When I teach with CoreDogs, most of the work is done online. However, I still hold class for one hour per week. I give students a problem to solve in teams of two. I walk around observing their work, and helping when necessary. Such face-to-face meetings enable the rapid interaction necessary to diagnose and correct students’ misconceptions. Students also get to meet each other, and see an enthusiastic expert demonstrate his craft.

In sum, the CoreDogs Way lets faculty follow good learning science practice, without requiring institutional change.

• Faculty do not need to become learning science experts. Crunchy learning science goodness is baked into a CoreDogs course. Should faculty study learning science? YES! But, realistically, they will not.

• Faculty do not need to spend more time teaching. There are no lectures, and only one class session per week. There is little preparation for that session. Just choose a problem for students to work on.

• There are no changes in technology infrastructure. It’s just a Web site.

Who might be interested in the CoreDogs Way?

• Faculty who teach and/or design skill courses, and want to improve student outcomes. Many introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses are skills courses. Some professional school courses, like accounting and finance, are also skill courses.

• Administrators who allocate teaching resources. CoreDogs is flexible. For example, the people giving day-to-day feedback might not be regular faculty. They could be part-time employees, anywhere in the world.

• Student service professionals interested in retention. CoreDogs tackles courses with high failure rates. The CoreDogs feedback system helps identify at-risk students early in the semester, when intervention is still possible.

• Educational development professionals interested in that rarest of beasts, a tech project that decided on learning processes first, and only then looked for tech to support those processes. Yes, this actually happens sometimes!

• Learning science researchers interested in a practical application of their ideas.

I’d like to say I planned all this at the beginning, but that isn’t true. I wanted to create something for my own students, that would work in the institutional structure I’m in. Only later did I realize what I had.

CoreDogs is operational at http://coredogs.com. It’s not “someday software.” It already works.

I’d be interested in getting your thoughts.

Also, there’s a great opportunity to scale CoreDogs across many courses.

Can you recommend some people who might be interested? In CoreDogs itself, and/or scaling it across courses and campuses.

Kieran