Alternative Instructional Materials: A Case Study

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Alternative Instructional Materials A Case Study

• Andrew N. Carpenter, Ph.D.

10th Sloan-C International Conference on
Asynchronous Learning Networks Orlando, Florida
Saturday, November 143 2004 245am 400pm
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Discussion Outline

• Why design a textless course?
• Course goals
• Course structure
• Discussion

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Why design a textless course?

• Traditional anthology too abstract difficult for
  students to engage with effectively, frustrating
  for faculty to teach
• Traditional emphasis on technical metaethical
  issues is inappropriate for our students
  educational needs and our institutions mission

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Alternative to standard course

• Use highly-structured dialogue to investigate the
  practical relevance of ethics in students lives
  and careers
• Emphasize skill development students should
  learn how to conduct constructive discussion of
  complex, controversial ethical issues and should
  hone their analytical and communication skills

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Course outcomes

• Investigate the importance of sound ethical
  judgment and reasoning for responsible living

• Analyze significant case studies using key
  ethical concepts

• Debate significant ethical issues using
  respectful, clear, and incisive argumentation
• Assess your own ethical perspectives on issues of
  significance in your own life

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Course structure

• Four highly-structured case studies that are each
  discussed over two weekly lessons
• Mixture of small group, big group, and individual
  learning activities

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Small group work (week 1 of unit)

• Each of four small groups studies a specific
  ethical aspect of the units case study
• Each group discusses questions designed to help
  them analyze this aspect
• Each group reachesand defends in writinga
  specific practical decision related to the case
  study

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Big group work (week 2 of unit)

• Every group shares its report with the entire
  class.
• The class discusses together all four aspects of
  the case study, using the four student-generated
  reports as starting points

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Synchronous seminar

• Each week the instructor leads a synchronous
  seminar to discuss key ethical concepts and also
  the practical relevance of course material in
  students lives.
• Extra seminar time is available for small groups
  to coordinate their work.

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Individual Learning activities

• Four small papers
• Three web research projects
• Surveys about each of the four group project
  experiences
• Capstone learning activity philosophical
  portfolio

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Course Content

• Ethics in Business
• Ethics in Healthcare
• Ethics and Politics
• Ethics and the Environment

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eGuides to Ethics

• Eight installments distributed via PDF
• Each contains
• Information about ethics
• Information about the course and strategies for
  succeeding in it
• Bibliographic references with links to full text
  e-books in our on-line library

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Pedagogical Big Picture

• Seminars, web research projects, and eGuides give
  opportunities to study issues outside the scope
  of the case studies.
• The case study discussions give opportunities for
  deeper and more nuanced discussion of narrower
  issues

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Questions for Participants

• What are some less drastic ways of managing the
  pedagogical difficulties that led us to create a
  textless class?
• Are the course objectives interesting and
  appropriate ones for a general education survey
  course?
• What do you think are the most important
  strengths of a textless class like ours? What are
  the most important weaknesses?
• Question for philosophers How little ethical
  theory can an ethics course contain and still
  count as a course in ethics?

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• Andrew N. Carpenteracarpenter_at_kaplan.edu