Miami University is continuing toward its goal to promote student engagement and increase inquiry-based learning with the third round of the Top 25 Project, aimed at revamping the university's 25 most-enrolled courses.
According to Provost Jeffrey Herbst, inspiration for the project came from literature that suggested the top 25 courses at a university often account for a large share of students' credit hours.
"We saw that at Miami, (these top 25 classes) accounted for 23 percent of credit hours at the Oxford campus," Herbst said. "We realized that if we redesigned those courses, we could have a huge impact on the large number of students who would be taking those classes and that it was something that could be (done) efficiently."
Thus far, the project has enabled changes to course curriculum and funded research regarding teaching techniques and materials, as well as hire new instructors.
According to Herbst, the third round of the project will begin Oct. 1 with the deadline for preliminary proposals. Applying departments will notified Oct. 10 if they are eligible to submit a full proposal, which will be due Jan. 15, 2009.
The proposals will then be reviewed by a committee of professors and the final decision regarding which courses receive funding will be made public Jan. 30, 2009, he said.
Thus far, the project has already awarded funds for redesigning 12 courses in the first two rounds and expects to approve six to eight more courses for funding this round, Herbst said.
Departments selected for funding will receive up to $35,000 in a two-year period.
According to Herbst, round one of the project began in the 2006-07 academic year while round two began in the 2007-08 academic year. Departments applying for funding this round will go through the same proposal process as the previous two rounds, he said.
Liz Mullenix, department of theater chair, said the Top 25 Project came at the perfect time since the department was already looking to revamp the highly enrolled Theater 191, Theater Appreciation.
The class was approved for funding during the project's first round in 2006 and has since changed the content to give students a glimpse of all aspects of the arts through interactive lectures and weekly breakout sessions, Mullenix said.
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"Rather than listening to a lecture, we want to inspire intellectual curiosity about a topic so students will ask why and how this happens," she said.
Along with changes to teaching methods, Mullenix said the revamped Theater 191 course requires students to produce a short play to be presented at the end of the semester and features lectures from guest artists. The course also features a shadowing experience that provides a backstage view of how a show is put together.
"With this, students realize how much work, collaboration and creative decision-making is involved in a production," Mullenix said. "Things like this encourage an even more dynamic level of engagement."
Brenda Boyd, an instructional design and technology specialist with Advanced Learning Technologies, a subcategory of Information Technology Services, agreed and said the shadowing experience incorporated into Theater 191 is an example of the Top 25's goal of making courses more engaging.
"We believe this is a more active approach, is more integrative and inquiry-based where students will learn about something which will compel them to go out and learn more about it on their own," Boyd said.
As part of a team to support faculty with course redesign, Boyd has worked to integrate technology into the redesign of courses such as Communications 135, Public Expression and Critical Inquiry and Theater 191.
According to Boyd, departments are assigned a team that includes members from Liberal Education and Advanced Learning Technologies to help revamp their courses.
Boyd said the learning outcome of the class drives the technology that is eventually incorporated but in some cases, technology is not the missing component.
"We don't believe that if you put more technology in a class, that students will learn more," Boyd said. "It depends on the learning outcomes and goals of the class and that might involve technology, but as in the shadowing experience, it might not."
Because Theater 191 is a Miami Plan course offered at both regional campuses, Mullenix said the biggest challenge so far has been finding a way to apply the changes made to the course using resources available at Middletown and Hamilton.
"Middletown has a class that is completely online and it's been a challenge to see how to take this class that requires a tremendous number of staff and make it applicable to just one professor as there is at Hamilton," Mullenix said.
Regardless, Mullenix said the department has truly benefitted from the project.
"I dropped by one of the classes last week and it was one of the most electric experiences I've seen in 15 years of teaching," she said. "If we didn't have the funding from this project, we wouldn't have been able to make all these changes to the curriculum."
Other courses that received funding in the first round include Marketing 291, Psychology 111 and Geology 101.
In round two, courses that received funding include Botany, Microbiology and Zoology 115, Management 291 and Economics 201.
For more information about the Top 25 Project and a list of funded courses, visit www.units.muohio.edu/led/Top_25_Project/Index.htm.
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