Disrupting the Hidden Curriculum through Transparent Prompt Design

• In Event: Innovative Teaching Practices: Part 2

Abstract

Knowledge transfer, or the ability to apply knowledge gained in one setting to new settings, is crucial to students’ success beyond college. Transfer may occur within a course, across courses, or from coursework to situations outside the classroom, and the ability to transfer knowledge enables college graduates to use their learning in the workplace, graduate school, community settings, and more. However, in our assessment efforts, we consistently found limited evidence of transfer at either the lower- or upper-division, as well as across both first time freshman and transfer populations.

To investigate possible causes of this problem, we assessed assignment prompts and discovered that faculty expected students to demonstrate transfer, but frequently did not prompt for transfer either implicitly or explicitly. Moreover, we found that when transfer was explicitly prompted, students demonstrated the skill successfully. We argue that lack of clear prompting contributes to an inequitable “hidden curriculum” and hinders student ability to use their learning beyond college. We draw upon principles of Transparency in Teaching and Learning, which have been demonstrated to improve outcomes especially for historically underserved student populations, to work toward clear and explicit prompt design.

In this interactive symposium presentation, participants will examine how the “hidden curriculum” contributes to inequality; discuss what knowledge they want students to transfer from their Sociology coursework; and learn techniques they can use to prompt for knowledge transfer in lower- and upper division Sociology courses. Participants will leave the symposium with tools they can apply immediately in their own courses, and knowledge of how these tools will benefit students.

Author

• Amanda Pullum, California State University-Monterey Bay