Strategic Course Redesign Focused on Professional Skills

The goal of this project is to shift the focus of a set of introductory courses, that are heavy in disciplinary content, in order to make space for greater emphasis on professional skills, such as information literacy, quantitative reasoning, communication, and others. The main challenge in accomplishing the goal is that the particular courses involved have high-enrollment—2300 undergraduates enroll in each course each year and they are taught by a team of 13 faculty. Because many faculty teach the courses, it is difficult to standardize the curriculum and the expectations across sections. I am facilitating redesign of these courses in a way that engages the faculty and builds consensus, so that change is consistently implemented and sustained. With PTF funding, I participated in professional development related to leadership and institutional change. I then applied this training to develop a five-step plan for completing the project: (1) invite faculty to participate, (2) decide collectively on process and scope, (3) build skills modules, (4) implement modules in courses, and (5) evaluate the project process and products. Twelve out of 13 faculty accepted the invitation and have actively participated in this project. Due to COVID-19, we delayed the implementation and remained in the building phase longer than planned. The group has used the remote summer and fall 2020 to collaborate with UT Libraries to build a substantial self-directed module on information literacy. This module will be implemented in Spring 2021 courses, and other skills modules will be implemented in sequence.