Institute/Session Summary:

In the implications section of their seminal review article, “College Studying,” Nist  and Simpson (2000) articulate a set of recommendations for college studying courses and programs. The first, and perhaps most important, principle they enumerate is the use of local learning from text demands to guide curriculum design. They write, “Although it may seem obvious, our first recommendation is that programs and courses should reflect the academic tasks and texts that professors assign (p. 658).” Put simply, strategic reading and studying courses that have the aim of preparing students to meet the learning with text demands of other coruses and contexts should design their curricula expressly around those demands. However, this apparently obvious principle is not widely implemented. As Nist and Simpson observe, “Our 20 years of experience in the field have taught us that many college studying programs still use a generic model that relies on commercial materials to dictate what stu
dents will be taught. (p.658)” And, they go on to say, “A more powerful approach is for instructors to begin curriculum development with an explicit understanding of the tasks and texts expected of students at their institutions (italics in original) (p.658)”. That is, strategic reading and learning educators need to survey and analyze the reading and learning tasks that their students encounter in their actual coursework in order to design courses that develop knowledge and strategies that transfer effectively. These tasks, in turn, must be analyzed for the nature of the learning expectations instructors hold for students and the nature of the resultant demands for students.

However, ascertaining these demands is not as obvious as it may appear. Determining the reading and learning from text demands of particular institutional contexts requires a careful analysis of the reading assignments, learning expectations, and cognitive demands of a range of representative courses. Thus, those who develop and design curricula based on the texts and tasks assigned in local settings-- as Simpson and Nist recommend— need analytical tools or frameworks for determining these demands.

The purpose of this session is to articulate just such a framework, illustrate its application in determining learning with text demands on one campus, and derive some implications not only of the findings from this particular analysis, but also, more broadly, of implementing this first principle of course design. For instance, we will collectively consider whether commercial reading textbooks can adequately serve courses designed using this principle. Additionally, since Stahl et. al. (1991) argue for the efficacy of the simulation model of course design, we will consider whether analyzing learning with text demands across the curriculum can facilitate the selection of a course to simulate which best develops knowledge and strategies that will generalize well across students’ coursework.

I intend to engage participants in reflecting upon and articulating the range of reading and learning assignments at their institutions AND at institutions to which their students frequently transfer. Once I have explicated the analytical framework for determining learning with text demands, participants will be asked to use it to begin to determine the demands for which they are preparing students. Thus, they will initiate, during the session, the process that Nist and Simpson recommend. Participants will take away with them not only a detailed illustration of how to conduct an analysis of learning with text demands, but also materials that will facilitate their own analysis including the analytical framework described above and sets of questions to guide their analysis.

Nist, S. & Simpson, M. ,  (2000). College studying. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.). Handbook of reading research (Vol. III) (pp. 645-666). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Stahl, N., et. al. How college learning specialists can help college students. ERIC Digest. ERIC clearinghouse on reading and communication skills. Bloomington IN.

Presenter1 Name: Nic Voge
Presenter1 Institution: UC Berkeley
Presenter1 Bio: Nic Voge is working on his doctorate in Education and is coordinator of the Study Strategies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Adopting a socio-cognitive perspective, his work focuses on college reading, academic literacy, motivation and faculty development. He is co-author of Life Beyond Grades (Cambridge University Press, in press) a book aimed at improving course design and instruction in university settings.