PATHWAY TO SPACE COURSE DESIGN

I worked with a small team to build an engaging and collaborative course that “breaks the mold” despite it’s large class size.

BACKGROUND:

One of the reasons we were approached to assist in designing “Pathway to Space” is because we recently finished exploring the large lecture experience on campus. Large lecture courses are a fundamental aspect of the undergraduate student experience. On average, undergraduate students take 14.5 large lecture courses throughout their academic career at CU; meaning on average 41% of the student’s classroom experience are in large lecture courses. “Pathway to Space” expected at least 80 students to be enrolled and one of the main challenges was creating a collaborative course with an unfortunate student to professor ratio (80:1). Our design decisions were significantly impacted by our findings in our large lecture research.

THE CHALLENGE:

We worked to understand the large lecture student experience at the CU in order to inform course design work in the future while also providing recommendations and resources to improve the large lecture experience on campus.

"Pathway to Space” brings students from all sorts of disciplines and majors together and connects them to the space industry in a collaborative and engaging way. The main goal for “Pathway to Space” is to connect all students to the field of Space Studies and guide each student in identifying how to integrate their studies with a future career in the space industry. 

On account of the interdisciplinary nature of the course there are a number of challenges this project presented:

• Creating a course that is welcoming of students from any major into the field of space studies
• Designing a course that can be easily and rapidly accommodate to thousands of students
• Designing a course that students are excited to be a part of

OBJECTIVES:

Large Lecture Discovery Work Objectives: 

• Learn student assumptions about large lecture courses to better understand the reality and variety of the large lecture student experience
• Develop resources and best practices for large lecture courses
• Understand student preferences in large lecture courses
  

Pathway to Space Objectives: 

• Pathway to Space “breaks the mold” of traditional large lecture courses
• Pathway to Space supports non-STEM students in a field that is traditionally exclusively STEM

MY ROLE:

• Design and conduct surveys 
• Design and conduct interviews 
  
• Design and conduct focus groups
• Observe large lecture courses

The course “Pathway to Space” is the kickoff course for the University of Colorado Boulder’s Space Minor. The space minor is open to all students across many different disciplines, but traditionally students in the school of engineering and applied science are the majority. One of the biggest challenges was creating a course that was engaging to students that didn’t study engineering and applied science.

APPROACH:

The design of this course was informed by our findings from our Large Lecture Discovery Work. We designed the course to be interactive of the exploration of space. Our discovery work began by looking at past data. We read through countless studies on large lecture courses before taking the next step understanding the large lecture experience. Though there is more than enough studies on the large lecture experience, there were a couple of holes that needed to be filled before we could close the book on our large lecture discovery work. How do CU students feel about large lecture courses? CU is very transparent about 80+ courses being the norm of the CU experience, maybe students don’t mind? Most large lecture courses on campus are supplemented with a recitation class to recreate the concepts discussed in the larger section, does that compensate for the lack of discourse between faculty and students? Tackled our unanswered questions in four different ways:

ONE QUESTION SURVEY:

I canvassed around campus asking students how they feel about large lecture courses. 

FOCUS GROUPS:

We held a couple of focus groups, all revolving around what students like and dislike about large lecture classes. We also asked what their solution to their issues with large lecture courses were. 

OBSERVE LARGE LECTURE CLASSES:

In between focus groups we would all observe large lecture courses throughout the semester. We were primarily assessing the student’s engagement in the course. Are they taking notes or shopping online?

CAMPUS WIDE SURVEY:

We launched a large campus wide survey to answer the questions we couldn’t answer through observation and small groups. We wanted to ask students directly what their experience with large classes are. 

FINDINGS:

We found that students have a negative perception of the large lecture course format. Our findings suggest that many students feel this way because of the challenges that surround large lectures. The most significant challenges related to notions of distraction and engagement. 

We found that:

• 57% of students indicated that they are distracted half of the time or more in large lecture courses. 
• 74% of students reported being distracted by other students talking
• 70% by other students’ screens/devices.
• 51% of students indicated that they have difficulty hearing the instructor
• 41% of students indicated that they have difficulty seeing lecture materials and presentations

We asked students for suggestions to mitigate the distractions. The most common suggestion related to banning or limiting device use in the classroom. Other common suggestions related to foster student engagement through interesting lectures and presentations:

• 93% of students indicated that an “interesting” instructor” improves their ability to stay focused
  

Students also suggested that engagement can be improved through:

• Facilitated interaction with instructions, TAs, and peers
• Group work and/or group discussions 
• Instructors learning their students names 
• Connecting lecture material to the students’ lives

We also found that the physical nature of the large lecture classrooms hinder positive experiences.

•  34% of students indicated that they are distracted by background noises (i.e., noise from the hallways)
• 41% of students indicated that classroom seating options are not ideal for engaged learning

WHAT I LEARNED:

I was a student at CU while we did this study and designed “Pathway to Space,” and my biggest takeaway was learning the balance between being a user and being a designer looking in. I had to learn when to attach my experiences with large lectures and when to detach it and simply listen to the users and really take in what their saying even though that isn’t my experience at all. 

Personally, I didn’t mind large lecture courses. I felt like I had more autonomy. I liked the fact that I didn’t have to “report” my attendance to anyone. I felt that large lecture courses were really straightforward and didn’t consider that I wasn’t getting the support I needed to succeed. When I first started canvassing I would ask probing questions to students who stated that they had a negative experience trying to sway them into perceiving large lectures they way I do. I didn’t realize what I was doing till discussing my day with one of the project leads. She said I was “showing my hand” and taught me the importance of asking open-ended questions.