Dear CASL Faculty –
Due to time constraints, I did not have the opportunity to communicate as much about the PBL courses as I would have liked during the CASL Faculty meeting last week. To remedy this, I have recorded a short (around 9 minutes) presentation about the PBL Career/Major Exploration Course and the PBL Capstone Course. This presentation focuses on how these courses fit into the curriculum, as well as the course approval process.
Below are the course syllabi that are being reviewed by DECs, CWPs, and by faculty in the slack group. These are course shells within which I am attempting to capture commonalities across our diverse CASL courses (e.g., the examination and identification of a problem or phenomenon; the generation and evaluation of a variety of solutions or methods of inquiry; learning and problem solving as an iterative process; an emphasis on written and oral communication; plus, an examination and reflection of team functioning and DEI considerations). The course shells focus on the practice-based learning process. I am hoping to obtain approval of the PBL course shells through the regular course approval process.
However, faculty teaching the course will choose their own course materials, insert their own disciplinary content, and define their own course projects. This faculty-added content will be reviewed by a CASL PBL faculty advisory board through a streamlined application process.
I am suggesting this two step approval process to prevent each faculty team from having to propose their own unique course and complete their own DDC applications.This protects faculty time and allows us to add course sections quickly to the schedule. In addition, the shell promotes some consistency across course sections. For more information on this approach:
- The last few slides of the presentation contain specific information about the course proposals and the approval process.
- Here is an example of what the PBL Career and Major Exploration course might look like in the course schedule.
