course design

To recap, I'm prepping a new graduate level course on experimental design and data analysis (EDDA) that will serve MS and PhD students from geosciences and civil and environmental engineering. I've been working through the SERC course design tutorial, and so far I've figured out context and constraints, over-arching goals, and ancillary skills goals. It's finally time to add content to my course. (Note that the material that follows is a bit outliny, because I'm thinking out loud (on blog paper) here and looking for feedback) First, according to the good folks at SERC, I need to bring it back…

Now that things at ScienceBlogs have returned to normal, and I've drawn down my stash of reader emails, it's time to get back to work on my series on course design. For those who haven't been playing along (1.1, 1.2) I'm prepping a new graduate level course on experimental design and data analysis (EDDA) that will serve MS and PhD students from geosciences and civil and environmental engineering. I don't envision this course as a purely statistics course, though EDDA necessarily incorporates statistical concepts and techniques. Similarly, I don't envision this course purely as a proposal…

As introduced yesterday, I'm blogging my way through the SERC tutorial on course design, for a new graduate-only course on experimental design and data analysis. Yesterday, I explained the context and constraints on the course, and today I'm mulling on the course goals. I'm supposed to identify 1-3 over-arching goals for the course and 1-2 ancillary skills goals. Below the fold, I'll share my overarching goals and how I got to them. But I'm struggling with the ancillary skills goals, dear readers, and I'd love your help. Task 1.2c: Set one to three overarching goals for your course. The SERC…

After articulating that my most dire need is to get funded, it may seem disjointed to embark on a series of blog posts about teaching, but there you have it, the life of a professor at a place that requires both research and teaching. I still contend that I will get fired from my job much more quickly for failure to teach a course than failure to get funded, so I must do something about the new preparation I have for the fall. The new course, "Experimental Design and Data Analysis," is a graduate-only course with only a loose definition in the course catalog. It hasn't been taught for the…