Utilizing Prior Knowledge to Promote Content Integration

Meghan M. DavidsonSpeech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders

BackgroundResearch Methods in Speech-Language-Hearing (SPLH 660) is our program’s capstone course with up to 30 students enrolled each semester (Spring 2020: 24). Learning goals include:

• Evaluation of research, including adequacy of research to address scientific and clinical problems

• Reading, summarizing, and describing research through a literature review

• Describing a hypothetical research study that addresses a specific question or hypothesis identified by the student

• Providing constructive peer reviews of research paper drafts and team presentations

The main objective of this course is to help students learn the knowledge and skills to assess research studies for evidence-based practice.

ImplementationThe first Team Project for SPLH 660 is a research evaluation of an intervention related to speech, language, and hearing sciences.

I changed how students completed this project from last semester to this semester. More specifically, last semester students completed the project in two days in class. This semester time was allotted in class on a more consistent basis (almost each class meeting) for teams to work on and build their projects with the most recent discussion of information.

The intention with this change was to allow students to more consistently tap into and build on previous knowledge that would then promote integration.

Course Transformation Goal

The goal of the course transformation was to improve student’s integration of content across topics. Integration of material is evaluated through performance on the Team Projects, Individual Writing Project, and final exam.

Provided that three of four of these assessments are not completed until the final part of the semester, the course evaluation goal will be assessed based on the first Team Project.

This work was supported by CTE’s 2020 January Jumpstart

Student PerformanceTeams’ presentations and handouts were evaluated by the instructor and their peers using four distinct rubrics, presented below.

Overall, the teams did very well, with grades of two teams falling in the A range and two teams falling in the B range.

Two teams were graded with Bs largely because their handout was more of an advertisement for the treatment approach rather than a description weighing the evidence for a consumer.

Instructor Reflections

I thought that the student’s first team projects were much improved over last year.

All team presentations this semester were of much higher quality compared to last semester in terms of organization and argumentation.

Overall, the presentations were a much more critical analysis that appropriately reported and weighed the available evidence for each intervention.

Rubric Samples

Peer Handout Rubric

Instructor Presentation Rubric

Instructor Handout Rubric

Peer Presentation Rubric