Intentional Connection

This chapter details how learning-based course design promotes meaningful student connections with course content, course goals, and connections with peers, faculty, and student self-awareness. No matter the modality, the learning-based course design model provides a pathway for faculty and instructional designers to use backward design to create courses that embrace significant learning, valuable practice, and feedback opportunities. With an emphasis on authentic activities that are aligned to learning outcomes, learning-based course design avoids busywork and reduces rote memorization of facts and figures. Educational technologies can strengthen the faculty and student course experience, provided that these are purposefully integrated into the course. Courses designed with close attention to student learning provide skill growth that strengthens students' professional lives. Course feedback data allows faculty to refine the course and programs and institutions to develop stronger alignment to their stated goals.

Digitalization and Backward Design take the finance teaching techniques and study plan strategy one step further

Digitization has been around for several years, but its use has become a necessity with the Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdown forced us to work remotely overnight, to use digital networks to communicate, make payments, learn all sectors of activity were forced to adapt to the digital age in one night. This paper shows how teaching, research, and the study plan must adapt to the new communication requirements and students’ needs to achieve the course learning outcomes in a virtual environment. The paper proposes a realistic academic plan design - backward. Taking into account new environmental and digital challenges, the backward design facilitates the decision on the content of the study plan, the elimination of less important parts, and the application of new communication and assessment techniques.

An Innovative Curriculum Development Experience: Emergency Medical Dispatch Role in the Healthcare Transformation Vision of Saudi Arabia

BackgroundHealthcare medical dispatch systems play a fundamental role in the daily operations of prehospital services. This includes facilitating the interpretation of various dispatch-related systems, receiving incident calls, categorizing cases, guiding proper resources deployment, and providing proper instructions before the arrival of healthcare providers. Considering the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA’s) health sector transformation plan as part of Vision 2030, developing an Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) Program as part of essential prehospital services will allow rapid and competent healthcare delivery. In this study, our purpose is to describe the curriculum development of the EMD Program to improve the training of dispatchers and to share the experience in the interest of better prehospital dispatch systems.MethodsA selected group of education experts and academics in emergency medical services dispatch were assigned to develop an EMD curriculum over six months. This study aims to describe the approach followed in developing an innovative EMD Program to share the experience and ultimately standardize dispatch-related training programs. The data of this study was collected by reviewing approved documents of the EMD Program including program curriculum, syllabus, logbook, and exam blueprint after approval letters received from the Health Academy, Saudi Commission for Health Specialties.ResultsThe development of the EMD program utilized a consecutive mixed approach staring with a competency-based with backward design method to ensure the achievement of targeted outcomes followed by the Kern Six-step curriculum development model, namely: (1) problem identification and general need assessment; (2) targeted need assessment; (3) goals and objectives; (4) educational strategies; (5) implementation; and (6) evaluation and feedback. This resulted in four comprehensive modules and seventeen competencies throughout the fourteen-week EMD Program. Conclusion As part of the health sector transformation plan in KSA, EMD services play a fundamental role in the daily operations of prehospital healthcare services. Developing an EMD Program with a consecutive mixed approach including a competency-based with backward design method followed by the Kern Six-step curriculum development model led to a set of learning outcomes in the EMD Program including interpreting various dispatch systems, prioritizing incidents, deploying proper resources, and providing pre-arrival instructions to improve the current operations of EMD services, allow rapid access to healthcare facilities, and ultimately save more lives.

From "Hello, World!" to Fourier transformations: Teaching linguistics undergraduates to code in ten weeks or less

I used Backward Design to scaffold ten weeks of assignments that taught students how to perform sine wave vowel synthesis and a Fourier transformation approximation using just a few fundamental programming concepts. This strategy gave all students, regardless of their previous programming experience, the opportunity to implement algorithms related to core concepts in phonetics and speech technology. Reflecting on the course, it seems that the coding assignments were generally well-received by students and contributed to students programming something complex and meaningful.

Defining Rigor in Justice-Oriented EdD Programs: Preparing Leaders to Disrupt and Transform Schools

Faculty in practitioner-oriented EdD programs must continually defend the presence of rigor in their programs. The existence of rigor determines the preparedness of our educational leaders to disrupt and transform educational organizations to bring about equitable and socially just outcomes; however, perceptions of rigor by the larger community impact the overall success of these programs and their students. In this conceptual article, we discuss the ways in which the literature defines rigor within and beyond practitioner-oriented EdD programs. We integrate that the literature with the critical need for social justice leadership, and leadership preparation toward that end, to offer a conceptual framework for designing, assessing, improving, communicating, and defending the rigor of EdD programs centered upon social justice. We posit: EdD programs can claim to be rigorous and centered upon social justice if their faculty: (1) collectively envision and construct rigorous student learning outcomes (rigor as a challenge) connected to the learning of critical theory and the demonstration of critical praxis to improve the lives of marginalized/underserved students; and (2) use backward-design to develop and align curriculum and pedagogy with those outcomes, including scholarly learning experiences (rigor in research) and the elicitation of students’ critical thinking (rigor as complexity).