You’ve likely heard some buzz about converting some 3 credit courses into 4 credit courses. This Four-Credit Transition initiative Planning Guide from the Provost Office is a great place to start for any questions that you have about the initiative. As recommended in the Planning Guide, to engage with this initiative you should first connect with your program representative or assessment coordinator because shifting a course from 3 to 4 credits has implications for program requirements and degree completion.
But once you’ve huddled with your program and have plans to convert your course, what should you do? We in the Hub are happy to support your course redesign.
Has your program decided to eliminate a course and shift some of that content into your course? The best way to start is to redesign your course with a course blueprint. This is an opportunity to think through your learning outcomes and then connect the assessments and activities of the course so that your students meet those learning outcomes.
Perhaps your course always felt like it needed to be 4 credits to accommodate an experiential learning project? Now you can expand that project and make it the deep engagement that will accomplish your course learning outcomes. If not all of that work needs to happen in person, consider teaching it as a hybrid (or incorporating an “equivalent amount of work” as described in the Planning Guide) in order to give your students the time they need, outside of the physical classroom, to accomplish the hands-on learning.
If one of the courses that would better serve your program as a 4 credit course is online or hybrid, you might be wondering how to make sure that your course is meeting credit hour guidelines. The Planning Guide helps explain federal guidelines and how they apply to your course. This course workload estimator is a useful tool to see if your course is meeting weekly expectations for student engagement. The estimator is a great starting place but you can make adjustments once you see the student experience in your online or hybrid course.
This initiative will prompt a lot of conversations within programs. Talking about teaching – really thinking about the ways that our curriculum and our courses result in student learning – is good for students. The Hub is happy to work with you one-on-one or with groups of colleagues to think through course redesign. You can find our appointment scheduling links, including a link to book the first available Instructional Designer, on the Hub’s webpage.
Photo by Jennefer Zacarias on Unsplash