Spark

Transforming Foundational Courses
in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

Spark is a multi-year program designed for instructors from social sciences, humanities, and the arts interested in developing instructional approaches that foster knowledge, skills, strategies, and habits of mind that students need to become successful learners. This program aims to create discipline-specific understandings of life-long learning skills and attitudes by primarily focusing on foundational or introductory courses. Guided by the scholarship of UD faculty who specialize in learning, this program utilizes individual reflection, work in faculty-teams, CTAL’s Course Design Institute, and personalized instructional design support. Participation in Spark will result in courses that provide explicit attention to the learning process and support students as they become self-directed learners who better understand how they themselves learn.

Spark’s program goals:

Support instructors from social sciences, humanities, and the arts interested in developing instructional approaches that foster skills, strategies, and habits of mind that first- and second-year students need to become successful learners.
Assist instructors in the creation of student learning outcomes for their courses that explicitly address areas of the learning sciences referred to as “learning how to learn.”
Embed college-preparedness skills into course assignments, communications, and structures that will better support UD’s conditionally admitted students, and first generation students.
Generate assessment data that will better inform future initiatives to improve outcomes for first- and second-year UD students.

Spark faculty will develop course specific learning outcomes related to at least one of the following:

How to be a better student.
Examples include learning how to engage in self-regulated learning, and/or learning how to approach and complete complex reading or writing tasks.

How to examine and construct knowledge.
Examples include learning how to create and assess truthfulness, source trustworthiness, and reliability of inquiry methodologies (e.g. ethnography, narrative research, textual analysis, etc.).

How to pursue self-directed or intentional learning.
Examples include developing a learning agenda and plan, valuing continuous improvement, becoming an intentional learner, being a reflective learner.

How to develop an openness to learning new things and curiosity about the world.

Questions about Spark?

Contact CTAL’s Spark Program Lead: Dr. Stacie Larkin

Who is Spark designed for?

Spark is designed for instructors from social sciences, humanities, and the arts who teach large, foundational courses that serve primarily freshman and sophomore students. We are most interested in courses where students have been known to struggle. Through Spark, faculty will design their course to include “learning how to learn” skills that will not only help students be successful in their course, but will be able to apply these skills in future courses and beyond.

How do I participate in Spark?

Spark participation is by invitation. If you have questions about the program or believe your course would be a good fit for Spark, please contact CTAL’s Spark program lead Dr. Stacie Larkin at slarkin@udel.edu.

How does participating in Spark help me?

As a Spark participant, you will receive:

Individualized support from CTAL, UD Library and Instructional Designers from UD Online to assist you in further developing your course and implementing new strategies to foster student learning
Collaboration with other Spark faculty in monthly group meetings addressing timely topics related to student learning
A stipend of $5,000 to support the time involvement in course re-design and ongoing involvement throughout the year
The title of Provost Teaching Fellow

What takes place during the 1st year of Spark?

Coming soon

Meet the current Spark faculty participants

The following faculty are participating in Spark’s inaugural year 2021-2022

Cresean Hughes, PhD

Department: Sociology and Criminal Justice
Course: CRJU 110 – Introduction to Criminal Justice
Spark goal: Dr. Hughes identified the importance of students being able to critically evaluate the sources of information they were accessing to address important questions in his course, such as the role bias and authority play when analyzing a criminal case. Students learned how to evaluate sources of information through resources he shared on his Canvas course site and by providing opportunities for practicing this skill through small-stake assignments he created called “News You Can Use”.
Other course design changes that occurred because of Spark: Students taking an asynchronous course often had challenges dedicating sufficient time to complete the learning activities. By including the amount of time each learning activity should take (watch a video, read a chapter in the textbook, participate in a discussion board activity, complete an assignment, …) students indicated they were better able to plan their week and complete all of the tasks for this course,

Kedron Thomas, PhD

Department: Anthropology
Course: ANTH 101 – Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
Spark goal: Dr. Thomas identified the development of effective study habits as an important need for students in her course. She addressed this by incorporating timely reminders and tips, providing resources to her students on study skills, and having students complete a set of learning plan self-assessments.
Other course design changes that occurred because of Spark: By attending the Course Design Institute at the onset of Spark, Dr. Thomas decided to dedicate time to designing her Canvas course site using the recommended template. Being that her course was asynchronous, having a well-designed and easy to navigate course site was important to her. She also applied the concept of “chunking” to her recorded lectures so that the videos were only 5-15 minutes long and addressed a specific concept or topic. This benefitted her students so that they can better attend to the shorter chunks versus one long lecture. Students also found it easier to find and review specific content covered in a recorded lectured with the smaller chunks. An additional benefit for Dr. Thomas will be the ease in re-using and updating the chunked videos as it is easier to revise a smaller video versus one long one.

Jennifer Trivedi, PhD

Department: Anthropology
Course: ANTH 101 – Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
Spark goal: Dr. Trivedi identified the ability to take good notes as an essential skill for her course. It relates directly to the ability of anthropologists’ being able to take “field notes”, but is also a skill that is critical to learning and studying in in college and beyond. Students learned about effective note taking skills through resources she shared with them, by providing worksheets called “guided notes”, and providing feedback on submissions of their notes at three points during the semester. In addition, she shared exemplars of students’ notes (with their permission).
Other course design changes that occurred because of Spark: Using quiz performance data collected from Canvas, it became clear that students who took advantage of the weekly optional quizzes performed significantly better in the course when compared to those who did not take the quizzes. With this information, Dr. Trivedi plans to require all students to take the weekly quizzes, and will inform her students how this data influenced this decision. These quizzes will be low-stake opportunities for students to prepare for the bigger exams and will provide Dr. Trivedi and her students feedback on how they are doing much earlier in the course. By having this knowledge, Dr. Trivedi can reach out to students with tips, resources and/or the opportunity to meet 1:1 earlier in the course, before a higher-stakes exam.