INSTITUTIONAL PORTFOLIO.

This part of the IUPUI Portfolio contains examples of student and faculty work in individual courses.

• Learning Communities (PDF) are courses offered to first-year students that help orient them to college-level work and to campus life and resources. Students in this learning community for student athletes, UCOL 110-R505, offered by University College, have been retained at an exceptionally high rate compared to "all" beginning students.
• Engineering 195, Introduction to the Engineering Profession, is a learning community for prospective Engineering majors. Read the syllabus here.
• Here is the syllabus for section R462, a first-year learning community offered by the Department of Tourism, Conventions, and Event Management.

Gateway Courses

• W131, Elementary Composition I, is part of the Department of English Writing Program. Along with the University Writing Center and the Office of Campus Writing, the program provides campus-wide support for writing as a means to improve and demonstrate student learning in all academic schools and programs. Click here to see examples and assessments of student essays written for a W131 assignment that asks students to reflect on their own writing processes.
• R110 Fundamentals of Speech Communication, taken by almost all IUPUI students, introduces students to the fundamentals of public speaking. To see what students learn in the course, click here.
• Workshop Chemistry: This PowerPoint presentation summarizes the impact of revisions made to General Chemistry I, an important Gateway course in which high proportions of students were dropping or failing the course, or not learning enough to succeed in subsequent Chemistry courses. As part of the Gateway Program and Project SEAM, a large-scale high school-to-college articulation project, the course was revised to include new features aimed at increasing students" opportunities to engage with course materials. Among other interventions, mandatory peer-led, small-group "workshop" sessions allow each student more time to work with class-peers to discover problem solutions, while improving time-on-task, leading to significantly enhanced student success in the course.

Capstone Courses

• Capstone courses typically ask students to integrate and apply their learning of the Principles of Undergraduate Learning and their major discipline by completing a significant project, often one that addresses a "real-world" issue or a close simulation of one. In TCEM 499 Operational Analysis, students majoring in Tourism, Conventions, and Event Management work in small groups over the semester to create a business plan for a new company in the field. At the end of the semester, they present the plan to classmates and invited guests from the industry. Click here to see an example of one of these projects and its assessment.
• In this capstone course for English majors, students reflect on their learning of the PULs and the extent to which their major and their IUPUI experience as a whole have contributed to this learning. Click here to see student reflections on PULs and view a video on a student"s capstone project.

Teaching, Learning, and Technology

• Sociology and English: This report resulted from an experiment funded by the Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign. The project created linked sections of two key Gateway courses, R100 Introduction to Sociology and W131 Elementary Composition I, and made extensive use of technology to enhance students" interaction with one another and with course instructors, all with the aim of improving student learning and success in these courses. The experimental project is still ongoing, but this preliminary report suggests that the redesign is leading to significantly enhanced student learning and retention.
• This report (PDF), by three faculty members in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision, discusses student responses and self-reported learning outcomes in an online course on "Human Behavior in Organizations" that made extensive use of small-group work.
• Here is a PowerPoint presentation by a faculty member in the English Department on the advantages and challenges of teaching writing in a Web-based distance education format.
• This report on a survey of students (PDF) enrolled in three online courses in Labor Studies provides some insight on the characteristics and experiences of students who enroll in distance education courses. It also suggests that the availability of the courses online were a key factor in motivating many students to enroll.

More Course Examples

• Honors B104 Introductory Psychology as a Social Science introduces students to critical thinking by asking them to apply it to their own lives. Read more about the course here.
• IET 104 Introduction to Industrial Organizations: A new instructor was challenged to revitalize an introductory course for majors in Organizational Leadership and Supervision, School of Engineering and Technology, that was traditionally organized around theoretical textbook-based material. Her solution was to re-focus the course around a business plan each student was required to develop, drawing as needed on the materials in the text. Click here to read a short article about the newly restructured course, view a PowerPoint presentation on the course revision, and read a business plan written by a student who went on to start his own business based on the business plan he developed.
• Engineering Ethics: A professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has developed this Web site as an example of how engineering ethics and professionalism are taught to and learned by majors. The site includes the syllabus and related materials, assignments, and information on student course outcomes.
• A104 Cultural Anthropology: Here is an extensive Web site created for an introductory Anthropology course section that uses concepts from Anthropology to introduce students to the PULs and to college-level learning. This course is classroom-based, but the instructor makes extensive use of the Web, and, specifically, Oncourse, IUPUI"s online course management system, to support student engagement in course materials and in discussing course concepts with one another outside the classroom. (Unfortunately, privacy policies do not allow us to provide access to student online discussion.)

Department and School Assessment Pages

• Several departments and schools have begun pages on their Web sites that provide information on learning outcomes for their majors, assessment strategies, assessment findings, and related information. Here are several examples:

Department of Psychology

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University College