Mapping across the semester
Every week looks reasonable and the sequence does not work
Week nine assumes something week four never actually taught, and you find out when the assignment comes in.
What it is
Laying the knowledge and the skills across the weeks on one page, in two colors, so the sequence is visible as a whole rather than as a list of sessions.
The workshop ran this on flip charts with sticky notes, one color for knowledge and one for skills, mapping at least one goal across a fifteen-week semester. The physical version matters more than it sounds: the point is to see the whole term at once and find the gaps, and a scrolling document hides exactly that.
Knowledge and skills behave differently across a semester. Knowledge can be delivered once and referenced later. A skill has to be practised at intervals, which means it occupies several weeks rather than one, and that is the thing a topic list never shows you.
Run it
- Take the knowledge and skills lists from decomposing your goals, one item per sticky note, two colors.
- Lay out the weeks and place each item where it is first taught.
- Mark prerequisites. Draw the arrow from the week that needs it back to the week that supplies it. Backward arrows are the finding.
- Mark what moves out of class, so the in-class time you have left is honest.
- Group related items, and look for skills that appear once. A skill taught in one week and assessed in week twelve was not taught.
Say this
The check, once the map is on the wall
Which weeks carry more than one new skill? Those are the weeks that will run long.
Which skills appear exactly once? Those are the ones students will not have by the exam.
Which arrows point backwards? Those are the sequencing errors, and they are cheaper to fix on a wall than in week nine.
In my courses
The EPI 601 sequence runs from causality and counterfactuals through measures, study designs, confounding, information and selection bias, precision, and interaction, ending with student presentations.
Mapping it exposed the dependency the schedule had been hiding. Confounding and DAGs arrive in session 8, but the study-design sessions before it already require reasoning about which variables to adjust for. The critique skill that the scaffolded study critiques assess is practised from session 2 onward rather than introduced once, which is why the critique assignments are scaffolded across the term rather than set as a single piece of work.
Evidence
None. This is a design procedure from the workshop, not an intervention, and there is no study of it in either direction.
What it produces is an artifact you can inspect without collecting anything from students, which is the same argument that supports backward design and scoping. You can hold the map and the assessment schedule side by side and see whether they agree. That is worth an afternoon; it is not an effect.