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Forum addresses progress of Top 25 Project

Faculty and administrators gather to hear representatives for COM 135, MKT 291 and THE 191 speak about changes to the courses aimed at increasing student engagement.
Faculty and administrators gather to hear representatives for COM 135, MKT 291 and THE 191 speak about changes to the courses aimed at increasing student engagement.

Amelia Carpenter

Faculty and administrators gather to hear representatives for COM 135, MKT 291 and THE 191 speak about changes to the courses aimed at increasing student engagement.

A group of Miami University faculty members gathered Thursday in Hughes Hall for an informational presentation on the progress of the Top 25 Project.

The project is focused on the redesign of the top 25 courses that dominate Miami students' first two years of their curriculum, according to Provost Jeffrey Herbst.

"Habits in students' form are affected very early and the fact that now (Miami students will) be able to take two dozen courses that will have been so thoroughly engineered, it will be a more exciting, more engaged place in the years to come," Herbst said.

President David Hodge said that the project is focused mainly on the institutional impact.

"The students will be different," Hodge said. "It's all about unleashing in our students their innate curiosities. (It's about) moving them from passively sitting in the classroom to getting them on the edge of their seats to answer a question that they didn't know at this point in time. It will affect how people think about Miami and our students' experience."

Teams from three of the Top 25 courses presented their progress to other faculty members involved in the project. Team leaders who spoke at the event included professor Marjorie Nadler from communications 135 (COM 135), professor David Rosenthal from marketing 291 (MKT 291) and associate professor Julia Guichard from theater 191 (THE 191).

Nadler spoke about the various changes and additions made to COM 135 for 2008-09.

The initiatives, Nadler said, included more online grading and feedback systems, web modules, an instructor resource site, the redesign of assignments and class work focused on critical thinking.

Similarly, team members of MKT 291 have changed their course significantly, according to Rosenthal.

In the past, the course has been made up of mostly lecture, Rosenthal said, almost entirely led by instructors with few active learning approaches. The team redesigned the course to reduce the amount of lecture time, while adding more in-class activities.

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Rosenthal said the students have not been happy this year about the additional 14 hour-long video lectures and textbook reading assignments, but the marketing team said they felt they have been successful in their redesign thus far.

"My response to (the students' complaints) is 'good, now eat your spinach,'" Rosenthal said.

However, Rosenthal said his team has not determined whether there has been an improvement in "high-order thinking."

"We don't know," Rosenthal said. "We've tested it, ran an experiment, but there are too many confounding factors."

Guichard said the redesign of THE 191 has allowed for students to explore their creativity.

"In the spirit of inquiry, we would make the students artists," Guichard said.

Guichard said that instead of teaching the course as it has been in the past-by reading plays-they have instead designed the course with Tuesdays in a large lecture hall setting, while Thursdays are taught in smaller groups of 30 where students are able to perform text rather than read.

"(The course is) also about theatrical techniques," Guichard said. "We need to provide students with those kinds of tools. There is more than one way to work collaboratively, research in this class has more to do with images, pop culture, (the students) interviewing friends, seeing what people around campus are wearing. Research is a little sketchy, (but it is the) content of what they're doing and how it affects their lives."

Although the focus of the event was on these three courses, all 25 courses are being redesigned for the project this year and will continue to evolve in the semesters to come for all Miami campuses.