INVITATION TO WORKSHOP III

Dear Colleagues,

We are looking forward to seeing your team at the Course Redesign Initiative workshop to be held at [PLACE] on [DATE]. To help you prepare for the workshop, this e-mail, which you should please share with your team, addresses two areas.

>  Workshop Presentation Format
>  Pilot Assessment Reports [one week prior to the workshop].

Workshop Presentation Format

An agenda for the workshop is attached to this message. We would like you to select one representative from your project to speak for a total of 15 minutes about the three topics that follow, which will leave about 5 minutes for Q&A after each presentation. We’ll have an LCD projector available but not Internet access, and we encourage you to bring handouts that summarize your presentation.

The following questions are meant to stimulate your thinking about points to include; please feel free to emphasize what you think is most important.

1. Based on your experiences thus far, what have your successes been?

• If you have data on learning outcomes and you think the pilot was a fair test, what was the impact of redesign on student learning and on rates of course completion with grades of C or better?
• Have there been other impacts of redesign on students such as improved attitudes toward course content?
• Did the course seem to work better for certain types of students than for others?
• What particular kinds of outcomes appear to be most enhanced?

2. What implementation issues have you encountered thus far, especially those that might benefit from advice from your colleagues?

• What have been the greatest challenges you have faced in implementing your course redesign?
• Did you encounter particular challenges in any of the following areas: adequate coverage of course content? technology? faculty development and support? student attitudes and reactions?
• What kinds of reactions to your redesign have you gotten from your colleagues? What kinds of objections or reservations do they have about the course and its delivery? What are they most excited or concerned about at this point? What evidence of success seems to be the most convincing?
• What kinds of support for your redesign project have you been receiving from your department or from the institution more broadly? What specific aspects of department and/or institutional support have you been most gratified by and most disappointed about?

3. How do you plan to scale your redesign for full implementation?

• How do you plan to meet the challenges you encountered during the pilot?
• Have your goals for the redesign changed as a result of activities up to now? If so, what caused you to revise your expectations, and what do you hope to achieve in the project’s next phase?
• Looking back on the redesign project thus far, would you have done anything differently?

Pilot Assessment Reports

The primary project contact should electronically send your pilot assessment and completion reports to [PROJECT LEADERS] [DATE: one week prior to the workshop]. Please use the two forms Pilot Assessment Results and Pilot Completion Form, which can be found in Appendix A and Appendix B at http://www.theNCAT.org/Guides/AllDisciplines/TOC.html. If you cannot meet the deadline, please send [PROJECT LEADERS] a note explaining your circumstances.
 
We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!

Table of Contents

Introduction
I. The Critical Components of a Successful Course Redesign Program
II. Assessing Institutional Readiness to Redesign
III. Making Key Decisions before the Program's Launch
IV. Developing a Plan of Work
V. Building Awareness and Capacity
VI. Assessing Course Readiness
VII. Preparing Teams to Submit Strong Proposals
VIII. Selecting Proposals That Will Succeed
IX. Monitoring the Redesign Implementations
X. Maintaining Consensus and Ensuring Sustainability
XI. Building Capacity and Scaling Initial Success

Appendices:

A. Plan of Work
B. Publicity Plan
C. Call to Participate
D. Application Guidelines
E. Workshop I Agenda
F. Workshop II Homework
G. Workshop Logistics
H. Workshop II Agenda
I. Workshop III Invitation
J. Workshop III Agenda
K. Workshop IV Invitation
L. Workshop IV Agenda
M. Final Report Format
N. Program Evaluation