High Impact Teaching for Sport and Exercise Psychology Educators

John Coumbe-Lilley, Amber Shipherd, John E. Coumbe-Lilley, Amber M. Shipherd

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000059366
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Psychologie
• Categoría: Psychologie du sport

High Impact Teaching for Sport and Exercise Psychology Educators addresses the need for a resource on effective course design, assessment, content delivery, and classroom management that is specific to educators in the field of sport and exercise psychology and to working with the millennial learner. It provides discipline-specific ideas to improve teaching in higher education.

The book provides an evidence-based guide of tried and tested teaching methods for teachers of sport and exercise psychology at all levels in all formats of education. Irrespective of the level and prior teaching experience in sport and exercise psychology, this is a starting point for delivering significant learning experiences for students in this field of study. Second, it addresses the millennial learner and recommends future teaching and learning experiences in traditional, hybrid, and online formats. Finally, High Impact Teaching for Sport and Exercise Psychology Educators provides a positive approach to engaging students in an ongoing process of learning and involvement in the field of sport and exercise psychology.

This book is intended for any educator in a 2- or 4-year institution of higher education who is or will be teaching courses at the undergraduate or graduate level in sport and exercise psychology as well as students and practitioners in the areas of sport and exercise psychology and physical education.

PART I
Course Design and Structure

1
COURSE DESIGN FOR SIGNIFICANT LEARNING EXPERIENCES

John E. Coumbe-Lilley

Chapter Summary

Course design is to teaching what oxygen is to the body. This chapter demonstrates how backwards course design influenced by the taxonomy for significant learning (foundational knowledge, application, caring, learning how to learn, integration, and human dimension; Fink, 2013) might be employed by an instructor. A well-designed course is constructed with an overarching structure, with clear and efficient processes leading to the expressed student outcomes. This chapter shows an instructor how to take a stepwise approach to course design using the elements outlined earlier. The author will discuss how to design a sport psychology course utilizing Fink’s taxonomy for their own purposes (Justice et al., 2007). The chapter will end with recommendations instructors might take into consideration in preparation for designing their next course or to redesign their current course.

When I began my college teaching career, I knew I wanted to be a good teacher. I threw myself into my teaching trying all manner of ideas and strategies to help my students learn. I earned a doctorate in educational psychology but it did not prepare me for the day-to-day work of teaching bright individuals with a range of motivations and goals. I observed some things I did during my teaching worked better than other things, so I did what I knew to do at the time, which was to return to the research on teaching. However, I expanded my search; I wanted to discover a way to achieve learning by design and not by accident. I wanted to be assured my teaching actually worked more often than not. I desired to have conversations with inspired students. I needed to look back on the week of teaching feeling satisfied that I was closer to delivering teaching for impact and significance in every class. Based on student evaluations, peer review, and self-assessment results I became a better teacher. I improved in the specific areas outlined later in Steps Three (feedback) and Four (teaching activities). These improvements followed my adoption of intentional course design to achieve consistent teaching and learning. The course design process shown later is intended to help you design your next course so that significant learning experiences positively affect student learning for mastery (Fink, 2013).

Step One

The first step in course design is to develop a vision for a prospective course, drawing from knowledge about the field of study and its interaction with situational factors influencing course design. There is a range of initial considerations instructors think about before developing and delivering a course. Fink (2013) proposed that instructors develop a foundational understanding of the factors guiding course design for a new course or an existing course in the process of redevelopment.

The foundational elements Fink referred to are termed situational factors. These include the characteristics of the student population (e.g., life situations, goals, attitudes, beliefs). This means an instructor should know their audience and appreciate the range of individual experiences students bring to their classroom. The duration, type, and frequency of course delivery encourage different course design approaches. This aspect of design is educational programming much like a physical training plan. If the course is a one time or a multiple offering this is a valid concern too, because the teacher must determine the intensity, type, complexity, and volume of work required for each type of course.

The faculty designs their course by starting with defining the student learning outcomes the course intends to achieve. They do this by checking that the overall curriculum goals of their academic department align with their intended course outcomes. Once alignment is accomplished, the required content knowledge and the desired skills and abilities students are supposed to develop are embedded into the course. These influences encourage the instructor to consider the zeitgeist of the social and cultural moment and strike a balance between the demands influencing the field of study.

The characteristics of the teacher are important to consider too. These include prior teaching experience, content expertise, and the degree of familiarity with the student population. Irrespective of experience in the field or teaching experience, no two teachers will teach the same way. This means each course is unique because of the novel characteristics of the individual teaching the course.

Lastly, the tone of the course is important to the extent that an instructor anticipates the challenge, controversy, and difficulty the course might pose students, affecting their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. These days there is increased scrutiny on how teaching is delivered in college classes. Instructors should consider how to introduce and facilitate learning so that ideas and concepts are tested rigorously in ways that allow students to wrestle with them and leave a course having had a significant learning experience.

When an instructor appreciates and understands the situational factors influencing the development of the course they intend to teach, they are more likely to create a course in which significant learning occurs. With sufficient knowledge of their instructional self, their audience, and the external factors moderating course development, instructors are equipped to consider the objectives and outcomes they intend the course to accomplish. Situational influences characterize the context a proposed course operates in, providing the instructor with a comprehensive understanding of their condition. This helps them understand their intentions in the next course design phases.

Step Two

The second step in course design involves establishing learning goals for students to achieve due to their effort and the intensity of their course-related behavior. To determine learning goals, instructors should begin by defining the outcomes the course of study should accomplish. During this process, instructors develop a hierarchy of learning outlining the knowledge, skills, and capabilities students should show in the short term and those they might retain after a year or more following completion of the course. Instructors should also consider how students might apply their learning in the near term but also with future learning needs in mind.

This step can lead instructors to simply develop a series of content input goals for their students and settle with them as the learning goals. However, to achieve significant learning experience, expanding the definition of the learning goals is encouraged. For example, instructors might provide a narrative of the content influencing the intended course goals followed by a measurable content input goal. If I were to teach a course about emotional recovery following anterior cruciate ligament recovery, I might write a brief paragraph demonstrating the need to learn about it followed by a goal statement “students will read and review five review articles by the end of section one of the course.”

Sport and exercise psychology has a particular lens to examine diverse phenomena through; these approaches encourage types of thinking in keeping with the expectations and future orientation of the academic discipline being studied. Additionally, the course should integrate with other courses connected with curriculum outcomes.

Building on these elements, learning goals should account for the impact of the course on the student’s self. An example of a learning goal for personal impact might include a reflective component to contrast the before and after effects of the course on the student’s experience concerning one or more elements in the course. Instructors might also desire their students to consider the effects of their learning on their interactions with others. Finally, considering how to encourage students to become lifelong learners helps develop learning goals too.

Setting learning goals for significant learning encourages instructors to go beyond a simple set of content objectives to achieve learning impact. It is the next most important step in creating memorable learning experiences because it accounts for the outcomes leading to the learning delivery and facilitation process. Once learning goals have been established, measurement toward goal achievement is possible.

Step Three

The third step concerns student feedback and is often linked to grading. Fink recommended three different kinds of assessment be considered during the course design process. First, audit-ive assessment confirming what the student did or did not learn for the purposes of grading. An example of this would be an assessment requiring factual recall, matching, and true-false items. Second, backward-looking assessment is designed into the course to verify the understanding a student acquired because of their studies. For example, a question posed to a student might ask them to contrast the differences between two sport populations in their use of a psychological intervention. Third, forward-looking assessment determines the readiness of a student to progress after the current learning period is over or ascertains if further learning is required to achieve readiness. An example of this would be to give a student a case where a volleyball team wants to improve its task and social cohesion and ask them to imagine how they might apply what they learned were they in the role of a certified mental performance coach working with the team.

Bolstering the use of assessment are feedback behaviors supporting student behaviors. Fink outlined four instructor feedback characteristics students would benefit from. First, give frequent feedback, at least weekly. Second, make feedback as immediate to the performance as possible. Third, discriminate between quality standards along a Likert scale so that a student understands the difference between excellent and good work and poor and average work. Fourth, provide feedback in a caring way, using a positive tone and language for growth.

To achieve the best outcomes from the assessment process, instructors s...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Course Design and Structure
• PART II Assessments
• PART III Experiential Learning Delivery
• PART IV Learning and Technology
• PART V Psychosocial Aspects of Teaching
• PART VI Teaching Reflections
• PART VII Professional Development
• Index