Documentation:Vantage College Curriculum/Content and Language Enrichment Tutorials
Vantage College Content and Language Enrichment Tutorials
This page is used to develop the curricula proposals for the UBC Vantage College tutorials. The sections below are drawn from the course content forms that are required for submission to the UBC curricula committee.
Description
Proposed Calendar Entry: (40 word limit.)
VANT 140 (WT1/WT2 1-6 credits) Content and Language Enrichment Tutorials
Sustained language support for linked content courses in International Program. Students develop strategies for self-directed learning.
Pre-requisites:
None. Restricted to UBC Vantage College students.
Required course for Vantage students
Action: Create New Course
Rationale for proposed Change:
In order to successfully transition to UBC Vantage College, students will need help with developing their strategies for self-directed learning. Additionally, as nonnative users of English, UBC Vantage College students need to be supported with timely, content-course-specific supplementary academic English language instruction. Such instruction is especially beneficial when students use their expanded understanding of how academic language works in context to deepen their engagement with disciplinary knowledge. The purpose of the VANT 140 tutorial is to reinforce student learning and to advance students' disciplinary literacy through heightened understanding of the links between language and the construction of disciplinary knowledge.
Standard timetable #1, UBC Vantage College, Science Stream VANT140 (#)
Standard timetable #2, UBC Vantage College, Science Stream Accelerated VANT140, # credit version Term 1: Courses supported by VANT140(2) (CHEM121, MATH100, PHYS107) VANT140(2) schedule Term 1 T 08:00-09:00 Tutorial TR 9:30-11:00 Tutorial R 16:00-17:00 Tutorial Term 2: Courses supported by VANT140(2) (CHEM121, POLI100, PSYC102) VANT140(2) schedule Term 2 R 14:00 Lecture R 15:30 Workshop Contacts hours = 5hrs/week, both Term 1-2
Standard timetable #3, UBC Vantage College, Arts Stream VANT140, 2 credit version Term 1: Courses supported by VANT140(2) (GEOG121, POLI100, PSYC102) VANT140(2) schedule Term 1 TR 9:30-11:00 Tutorial Contacts hours = 3hrs/week Term 2: Courses supported by VANT140(2) (GEOG122, POLI220, PSYC208) VANT140(2) schedule Term 2 TR 9:30-11:00 Tutorial Contacts hours = 3hrs/week, both Term 1-2
Course Information
A.Expanded course description, (including: rationale for course, intended users, # of students
B.Course objectives (What concepts or topics will be covered?)
C.Potential instructors (list of potential instructors and their suitability and readiness to teach)
Description and Objectives
The Content and Language Enrichment Tutorial combines engagement with content topics from a full-credit undergraduate "parent" course and tailored instruction in academic English with the aims of significantly enhancing the quality of undergraduate, international students’ understanding of and engagement in knowledge practices introduced in the course, and building students' autonomy as apprentice scholars. The enhancement of students’ knowledge-building practices across contexts is achieved by drawing attention to the links between key milestones in the knowledge practices of the relevant discipline (such as advancements in theory, method, and empirical investigation that typically organize course syllabi) and the ways these disciplinary milestones are instantiated in the use of English language.
The course schedule is organized on the basis of the ordering of specific materials (such as videoed lectures and lab procedures, or course readings) in the parent content course. This organization affords enhancement of students’ content knowledge using insights from applied language study that is concurrent with the introduction of the specific content foci in the relevant content course. Although specific uses of the course material will vary in individual course meetings, tutorial activities encompass recursive forms of engagement with the course material, including: (1) situating the course material within networks of practices in everyday lifeworld, academia, and other communities; (2) deconstructing the text’s meaning in context by making explicit how the meanings at stake link to specific language choices that make up the text (see below); (3) critically re-framing the material from its grounding in situated and conventionalized practices; and (4) transforming the material by consciously selecting meanings from it and transferring them to other contexts.
The basis for linking content-area knowledge with language, as in (2) above, is the increasingly well-recognized understanding of the role of language in content-area learning. It is well known that we gain knowledge through language (and in some cases, supplementary modalities such as mathematics). A complementary practice advanced in this course is that of using language as a resource for interrogating and understanding how content-area knowledge works, and, by extension, how it can be transformed. That is, explicit, functional knowledge of language is used to deconstruct, reconstruct, and recontextualize disciplinary knowledge. The functional approach to language makes explicit the links between language choices and their contexts of use by distinguishing three interdependent functions of language, that of representing content, positioning people and knowledge socially, and organizing coherent messages. This systematic approach helps ground understanding and discussion of the complex links between language, content-area knowledge, and the contexts in which knowledge is deployed. In this way, the Content and Language Enrichment Tutorial helps scaffold students’ course-specific and life-long capacities for building, interrogating, and recontextualizing knowledge.
Course Instructors
The course is developed through close cooperation between content-course instructors and the enhancement tutorial facilitators. The facilitators are experienced instructors in English for Academic Purposes with a strong preparation in the analysis of academic discourse.
Intended Audience
Restricted to Vantage College students
Course Topics and Structure: VANT 140
TO ADD HERE: SAMPLE SINGLE CONTENT COURSE TOPIC LIST WITH RELATED LANGUAGE FOCI
Potential Instructors
Dr. Steven Barnes, Instructor, Psychology
CK Choi 173, 604-827-3768
steven.barnes@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Dr. Joanne Fox, Senior Instructor, Michael Smith Laboratories and Microbiology and Immunology
Director, Vantage College Science Program
CK Choi 166, 604-827-0339
joanne.fox@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Dr. Joss Ives, Instructor, Physics
CK Choi 172, 604-827-2619
joss.ives@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Anka Lekhi, Instructor, Chemistry
Chemistry D218, 604-827-3492
anka.lekhi@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Dr. Fok-Shuen Leung, Instructor, Mathematics
CK Choi 174, 604-827-2149
fok-shuen.leung@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Dr. Siobhán McPhee, Instructor, Geography
CK Choi 171, 604-827-2077
siobhan.mcphee@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Dr. Jenny Peterson, Instructor, Political Science
CK Choi 167, 604 827 1597
jenny.peterson@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Dr. Jaclyn Rea, Instructor, Arts Studies
Arts Academic Writing Coordinator
CK Choi 162, 604-827-3765
jackie.rea@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
Dr. Georg Rieger, Instructor, Physics
CK Choi 172, 604-827-2619
georg.rieger@vantagecollege.ubc.ca
A team of full-time instructors with specialized training in English for Academic Purposes will be hired as 12-month lecturers to support this project course. The team will be coordinated by the Academic English Program Director, Dr. Sandra Zappa, Assistant Professor, Language and Literacy Education. Academic English Program (AEP) instructors will also work closely with the corresponding content area instructors to enhance the cohesiveness of the language-content connections made and the support provided for this project course.
Course Format
The Content and Language Enrichment Tutorial is a face-to-face course with important aspects of instruction to be flipped. As the Tutorial meets for only one hour per week per parent course, it is vital that the meetings be used for engaging interactively with the material. In the typical class, therefore, the students are asked to review an analysis of a selected text (e.g., video of part of a lecture, or extract from a course textbook) to scan the general functional profile of language in that text, and also to understand, through the sample text, the specific function of language that is in focus that week. Thus, by and large the "explicit" instruction on language in this course is given as homework, flipped. These materials are available to students through Connect, with annotatable videos being offered through CLAS. Let's imagine this week the focus is the function of hedging knowledge claims in the presentation of the results of a well-known experiment. In the subsequent class, students' observations and questions about the model analysis are addressed in small groups and, if necessary, the full class. This is followed by discussion that aims to situate the focal text and language function as practices located within a situated context of knowledge construction; as a practice it can also be understood in relation to students' own lifeworlds within and beyond academia. Having explored the focal function as situated practice, the group can consider variations in its use, a process that draws students into critically reframing expectations and conventions associated with the practice. Students are then encouraged to recontextualize the focal practice to situations and contexts that are relevant to them, with particular attention given to how variations of hedging in this case emerge in accordance with the new social contexts to which they are applied. In this arrangement, approximately equal class time is given to situated practice, critical framing, and transformed practice.
(How is the course structured (e.g., method of presentation of course material,
labs, tutorials, Connect, active learning, field experience etc.?
What amount of time is devoted to each approach?)
1hr/week per course content enrichment tutorial and 1hr/week per course language support tutorial; could include 1.5hr week common lecture format here (cross-cutting themes)
What would Day 1 look like?
- study groups
- presenting to each other
- reading to extract main points
Schedule TBC
One cohort of 75 students follows Tuesday workshop schedule below, the other 75 students have the same pattern of workshops on Thursdays; different sections based on standard timetables
- Some of these courses** have tutorials already and we may not need to propose additional workshops
| Tues | Thurs | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Term | Course | Class Size | Day | Time | Room | Term | Course | Class Size | Day | Time | Room | |
| T1 | Math 100 | 3 x 25 | T | 0800 | IBLC185 | T1 | Math 110** | 3 x 25 | R | 0800 | IBLC185 | |
| T | 0900 | IBLC185 | R | 0900 | IBLC185 | |||||||
| T | 1000 | IBLC185 | R | 1000 | IBLC185 | |||||||
| T1 | Phys 107** | 2 x 38 | T | 1400 | IBLC185 | T1 | Phys 107** | 2 x 38 | R | 1400 | IBLC185 | |
| T | 1500 | IBLC185 | R | 1500 | IBLC185 | |||||||
| T1 | Chem 121 | 2 x 38 | T | 1600 | IBLC185 | T1 | Chem 121 | 2 x 38 | R | 1600 | IBLC185 | |
| T | 1700 | IBLC185 | R | 1700 | IBLC185 | |||||||
| T2 | Math 101 | 3 x 25 | T | 0800 | IBLC185 | T2 | Math 110** | 3 x 25 | R | 0800 | IBLC185 | |
| T | 0900 | IBLC185 | R | 0900 | IBLC185 | |||||||
| T | 1000 | IBLC185 | R | 1000 | IBLC185 | |||||||
| T2 | Phys 108 | 2 x 38 | T | 1400 | IBLC185 | T2 | Phys 108 | 2 x 38 | R | 1400 | IBLC185 | |
| T | 1500 | IBLC185 | R | 1500 | IBLC185 |
Course Schedule
(A tentative schedule of the topics to be covered on a weekly basis)
Different sections, based on different standard timetables.
Term One
| Week | Activities | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
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| 13 |
Term Two
| Week | Activities | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 | ||
| 6 | ||
| 7 | ||
| 8 | ||
| 9 | ||
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| 13 |
Learning Outcomes
(What skills or knowledge will students acquire? Phrased as bullet points following the statement “By the end
of the course, students will be able to…”. Learning Outcomes should be linked to assessments.)
Revised Outcomes
Top-level Goal:
- Use strategies of self directed learning to reflect on and revise student work
Course Outcomes:
By the end of the language enrichment tutorials, students will be able to:
- Use strategies of self directed learning to reflect on and revise student work
- identify the main organizational patterns of disciplinary-specific (written/oral) texts and be able to organize these for either a specialist or non-specialist audience.
- identify and employ strategies to pack and unpack information, concepts, and/or arguments from a variety of sources.
- utilize comprehension strategies (listening, reading, writing, oral) to engage with and respond to questions or comments about their discipline from either a specialist or non-specialist.
- provide and receive peer feedback on student work in a variety of modes (oral, visual, written, mixed).
Sample Materials
Sample materials to support the above goals/outcomes
Assessment Criteria and Grading
(Is the course graded on a numeric (percentage) or pass/fail basis?
What assignments, mid-terms, or exams will be required of students?
How do the course assessments fulfill the stated learning outcomes?
What will each component of the course assessment be worth (mark breakdown?)
What will be the criteria? Include grading rubrics for non-exam based
assessments such as oral presentations, papers, etc.
Reading
- pre-reading quiz, reading quiz
- reading articles, how to learn (Journal Chemical Education, physics education research)
Writing
- reflections
- write an in-depth explanation in your own words
Oral Presentations
- participation
- doing presentations (have students present to each other)
- discuss/present conceptual questions from textbook, practice explaining ideas to each other
- role play, explain concept from physics, math, chem perspectives (rotate through roles)
Assessment Summary (Sample rubrics provided at end of this section)
VANT 140 WT1
- Assignment 1: Weekly quizzes (10%) [Learning outcomes: 3,4] - Description
- Assignment 2: Disciplinary exercises (35%) [Learning outcomes: 1,2,3,4,5] - E.g. problem sets, pre-reading quizzes, problems solving. Involve peer learning. Individual and group work.
- Assignment 3: Content and language assignments (35%) [Learning outcomes: 2,4,5] - a series of short tasks that reinforce and extend in-depth comprehension of a course concept (e.g. presentations, role plays, debates, individual and group work)
- Assignment 4: Self Assessment (10%) [Learning outcomes: 1] - Combination of learning plan, Can do statements, married with content to measure progress and plot a course for improvement.
- Assignment 5: Participation (10%) [Learning outcomes: 1,4,5] - Ongoing throughout both terms. Measures engagement and contributions to the enhanced tutorial.
Required and Recommended Readings
(A detailed bibliography of course readings)
Support materials and readings will be drawn from course materials (e.g. Chemistry, Geography) and will vary from course to course.
Budget Impact
(New Courses: explain the resources necessary for the course
and how the budget for new course will be accommodated within your academic unit.