Imagine you’re driving from the Santa Monica Pier to Epcot Center with someone who’s made this trip several times. To aid you in your venture, a voyage you’ll likely make in the future, the driver advises you to buy a map and to take notes along the way. You head out on the road, and soon enough, the driver gets cocky and starts taking side roads, stops at random tourist attractions along the way, and at one point gets lost in Oklahoma only to find out that you spend the last 10 hours headed in the wrong direction.
The whole time, you’re feverishly taking notes in an attempt to make sense of the map in light of seemingly aimless trip, but soon find that there’s too much information to gather. Eventually you arrive in Florida (in one piece), thinking that Amarillo skies hover over Arizona and Mississippi is the Show Me State. But, all in all, you’re pretty glad that the hellish trip is over. In retrospect, you recognize that the trip could have been better organized through the use of a rigid game plan. Instead of spending too much energy focusing on irrelevant information, perhaps, with better organization, more attention could be applied to the trip as whole.
Has the analogy emerged? It seems that this is how some students feel after a semester’s worth of science courses: lost.
A colleague from the University of California system (let’s call him “John”) floated this idea to me one afternoon during a chemistry workshop. We had been discussing methods for improving classroom structure, and he mentioned that it’s often the obvious things that we (as faculty members) overlook while attempting to navigate students through a maze of material. In any case, John claimed that by providing a “game plan” or, more specifically, a course outline for his students, the majority were able to remain “on track” for most of the (all too valuable) lecture time. John claimed that this addition to his self-admitted “superb teaching style” translated to better knowledge retention in students and higher evaluation scores.
Interesting suggestion. Having observed only a few colleagues teach, I don’t recall ever seeing extensive use of course outlines. However, studies suggest that providing students with a partial set of notes (e.g., an outline) generally leads to higher learning outcomes. Why? Because partial notes or outlines, when done correctly, provide students with a specific direction, taking the guesswork out of the lecture so the students to devote more time to learning and less time dealing with intellectual vertigo.
I had the opportunity to explore the use course outlines, or what I refer to as “study guides,” this summer in one of my chemistry classes. The goal was to prepare a single, concrete document for every chapter that incorporated homework assignments, lecture formats, and “Reality Check Questions” (an obvious nod to Bill O’Reilly). This latter aspect was included to ask students (in plain English) if they knew how to apply specific knowledge/information towards problem solving they would likely see on an exam. By no means have I perfected this process, but, judging by the feedback from my summer courses, I think they may have found them largely beneficial.
I'm curious to know if anyone else has had experience with course outlines. What worked well? What could be improved? Are they bad idea all the way around?
