Introducing Cal Poly Pomona and Introducing Backwards Course Design

What's in this week's materials?

Content:

Data about the Cal Poly Pomona student body
An introduction to the Cal Poly Pomona and first-generation student experience
An introduction to "backwards course design," or creating a course by starting with learning outcomes

Activities:

Investigate open-access data sources at Cal Poly Pomona
Reflection question
Begin to lay out a "three-column" table for one of your courses

Why is this important?

Cal Poly Pomona Students

Cal Poly Pomona is committed to addressing equity in student achievement and progress to degree. Although faculty can't address every reason that inequities in student outcomes exist, faculty (obviously!) are critically influential in student learning and success.

Anti-racist, equity-minded teaching requires getting to know the students who are actually in our courses, instead of basing our teaching choices on general impressions, assumptions, or unexamined past experiences. The information presented here is an overview for context rather than deep detail. There will be more to do to get to know the students who are in your specific courses (we'll talk about that in the Belonging, Inclusion, & Communication module).

McNair, T.B. 2021. Reimagining how we define equity gaps: Decentering whiteness and privilege. Liberal Education, 11 March 2021. AAC&U. https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/articles/reimagining-how-we-define-equity-gaps-decentering-whiteness-and-privilege.

Backwards Course Design

The basis of effective teaching is clarity about our goals for our students, then carefully and creatively aligning teaching and learning activities with those goals. "Backwards" course design helps us to ask first, "What do I want my students to achieve?" and then, "How do I help them achieve it?" and "How do I know they've achieved it?"

Backwards design stands in contrast to a content-based course design model in which the main question is "What content do I need to cover?"