With growing enrollment in anthropology courses, attention has been focused on improving student retention, engagement, satisfaction and success in key courses. To provide a testing ground for integrating active learning across the curriculum, the Department of Anthropology has been engaged in an NSF WIDER PERSIST-funded Partner Project. In addition to improving student success, the department was interested in institutionalizing discussions of teaching practices to support continuous improvement of undergraduate teaching.John Ziker, project lead and anthropology department chair, wrote: “The department took a collaborative approach to integrating evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) into the curriculum. The plan was to integrate EBIPs first, in three key courses, assess their effectiveness, and adopt EBIPs across the anthropology curriculum where they were shown to be effective and active learning strategies were not already in use.”
The first part of this process included the identification of research and career-building skills the department sought to cultivate. This entailed a review of the anthropology program learning goals and the course learning outcomes for key courses.
“The review of program learning goals led to a wholesale revision; this took more time than intended but the revision was well worth it. After the revision of program learning goals, the review and revision of course learning outcomes and selection of EBIPs followed fairly smoothly,” Ziker said.
After researching EBIPs, the department selected several to be incorporated into the curriculum. For example, in ANTH 102, Kendall House has included low stakes assessment and daily in-class activities to encourage higher levels of attendance. Inquiry learning activities were developed for ANTH 303 to address higher DFW rates due to a recent jump in enrollment. Many other anthropology faculty have adopted various EBIPs, such as concept maps, case studies, peer instruction, to address student success and engagement in the program. The department will assess the effectiveness of this new approach using end-of-semester student surveys, proficiency on exam questions, course pairing reports and other metrics.
As part of a grant from the National Science Foundation, WIDER PERSIST provides funding to STEM faculty and departments for projects that shift faculty practice and institutional culture around teaching and learning. For more information about WIDER PERSIST Partner Projects please visit the website:https://ctl.boisestate.edu/wider-persist/partner-projects/ .
BY: SHERRY SQUIRES PUBLISHED 2:22 PM / SEPTEMBER 16, 2016