The First Line of Contact: How Course Syllabi Can Be Used to Gauge & Reform Learner-Centeredness in a College Classroom

Abstract

While learner-centeredness is important to quantify, education researchers disagree on how best to measure it. The overall aim of this research was to measure the learner-centeredness of introductory biology classrooms with a valid and reliable instrument that offers a different perspective than self-reported faculty surveys or expert observation protocols – Palmer et al.'s (2014) syllabus scoring rubric. We investigated whether syllabus rubric scores aligned with both faculty self-reports and expert observations of learner-centeredness from the same classrooms, and whether these other metrics predict an instructor's total syllabus score better than instructor gender or years of teaching experience. Course syllabi from eight instructors who taught the same nonmajors biology course were scored independently using this syllabus scoring rubric. Our results suggest that syllabus learning objectives link to learner-centeredness and, interestingly, that other external metrics of learner-centeredness may predict syllabus rubric scores derived from Palmer et al.'s instrument.