Moving Forward with a Backward Design: Revision of German 221/231

Moving Forward with a Backward Design: Revision of German 221/231

Grant:
Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching
Academic Year:
2018 - 2019 (June 1, 2018 through May 31, 2019)
Funding Requested:
$6,000.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
vdisch
magell
Overview of the Project:
German 221/231 is a fulcrum course. It is the bridge between first-year German, where students acquire a basic command of the language and familiarity with German culture, and the culmination of the language requirement in the German 232 special topics courses, which are vital feeders to our upper-level courses. We offer around 15 sections of 221/231 each academic year, serving an annual total of roughly 240 students. Students review and build on what they have learned in the first year and begin a more complex engagement with written and visual texts addressing a range of social and cultural issues. In its last major revision in 2006, 221/231 was organized around 5 feature-length films, 2 easy-reader novels, numerous shorter texts and videos, and online grammar and vocabulary quizzes. We feel the time has come for a much more flexible and sustainable course structure, more adaptable to changes in the world, more in line with Rackham’s DEI strategic plan, and more open to flexible implementation by instructors in accordance with their individual expertise. Consequently, we propose a complete revision of the course by means of backward design. We will start by establishing clear and common learning outcomes for all sections and develop a modular course built around themes. We seek funding to support our work over the summer of 2019 to establish learning outcomes, develop assessments, conduct brainstorming sessions within the department and create lesson plans and teaching materials, in order to offer the re-envisioned course as of Fall Term 2019.

Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

Our objectives were to update the existing German 231, a multi-faceted study of German culture, into a course that is sustainable and interchangeable for diverse instructors' adaptions and for current events.  We developed curriculum to be based on the study of the 1,200 most frequent vocabulary words in the German language and on clear can-do statements of what students will be able to do in the real world.

Project Achievements:

Where we were: The previous course was organized around 5 feature-length films and 2 easy readers, additional short texts, videos, the Gateway vocabulary test. We had minute-by-the-minute lesson plans for all 54 days of a term, overheads (76), handouts, speaking prompts, videos, vocabulary lists and a plethora of supplementary activities, 4 in-class quizzes, 3 unit exams plus study sheets and grading guides, 2 oral exams and 24 Canvas quizzes, detailed instructions on Canvas for every student assignment, including all the links, handouts, grading rubrics and resources for daily homework, 4 essays and rewrites, and a final group video project. We covered a wide array of topics: family life, art, music, poetry, World War II, the Holocaust, postwar Germany, East Germany, the fall of the Wall, multicultural Germany, and racism.

Where we are: The course is structured around questions about identity, the concept of Heimat (home) and what it means to be German. We have 4 modules: childhood and family, geography and migration, art and culture, and history. It is a backwards-designed course –the focus of each unit is the end goal / outcomes in the form of can-do statements. Assessments are based on personalized real-world tasks. We shifted our focus from isolated language skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing) to the three modes (presentational, interpersonal, interpretive). We added more current materials and topics. There is now a greater variety of perspectives represented in terms of gender, age, (dis)ability, nationality, German-speaking countries, race, religion, etc. We provide students with opportunities and strategies for writing without heavy reliance on translation tools. Students learn about the concept of high-frequency (HF) vocabulary and develop strategies for learning vocabulary, recognizing patterns and word families. We send 221/231 students to 232 with the same basic vocabulary of 1,200 HF words that can occur in every area of specialization. In terms of grammar, students take all the same diagnostic grammar quizzes as in the past. Basically, we shifted the course more to “today:”  we brought the course up to the 21st century standards set forth by ACTFL.

Continuation:
Yes. Instructors of the course continue to add new ideas and materials to the new structure. Graduate students in our department received a grant to create lesson plans for the implementation of diverse texts from important contemporary voices in the German-speaking world.
Dissemination:
Graduate Student Instructors gain valuable training in curriculum development and practice in another curricular format to complement their teaching experience in 101 and 102. German 232 instructors reinforce and build on the high frequency vocabulary studied in German 231. The course update has proved to be timely considering the events of 2020, and the German Department has acknowledged this re-design as an important new contribution to our mission of inclusion.
Advice to your Colleagues:
If we had to do it all over again, we would have piloted the new course in just one or two sections rather than in all sections at the same time. It was challenging to develop the course while onboarding colleagues.

One major factor that facilitated the success of the project was the graphic memoir "Belonging" by Nora Krug that has resonated deeply with students and inspired amazing work.
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