Designing for postsecondary

Population · college or university · All situations

8 rows from 8 pages say what to change when the brief's population is postsecondary; 6 of them cite a claim. Pages whose rows cite claims come first. Read the basis before relying on a row: many carry a claim to learners or settings it did not test, and say so.

Character Education

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
University students (postsecondary), goal is civic competence	Keep a civic subject for its knowledge, and add service learning, project work and staff role models across courses and extracurricular life	civic subject alone insufficient [+W] (authorial argument, Naval et al. review); service learning [+W] (reported second-hand)

Fostering Communities of Learning (FCL)

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
postsecondary STEM course	Use the cycle for one unit a term; groups of 3–4; individual checks each week; keep lectures for core ideas.	Small-group learning in undergraduate STEM [+M] (d = 0.51 against non-group instruction; does not separate structured from unstructured groups)

Handouts/Online Guides/Visual Reading Aids

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Setting is a lecture or video, postsecondary or school	Use a guided-notes handout: the lecture outline with blanks for key terms and points, filled during the lecture; collect or check one section	Guided Notes Improve Note Accuracy [+S] (both entries read from abstracts; no effect size)

Modality Principle

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Adults (postsecondary, workplace training)	Narrate system-paced explanations	Mayer: 17 of 17 experiments with college learners, median d = 1.02 [+M]; animation or picture with voice beat picture with text for 36 adults [+M]

PAIR-C Framework (Pattern, Agents, Interactions, Relations, Causality)

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are pre-service or practicing teachers (adult, postsecondary) learning natural selection	Run the default arc as given, with the NetLogo moths and mice; add step 7 if they must teach recognizing emergence to pupils.	The PAIR-C study [~M]: this population and domain, near transfer only

Social Interdependence

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are adult / postsecondary, in a live course	Use small structured groups for problem sets, labs and design tasks, with individual assessment kept separate from the group product	Small group learning improves STEM achievement [+M] (39 undergraduate STEM studies, d = 0.51; compared groups with non-group instruction and does not isolate interdependence)

Professional development should guide teachers on integrating digital content and tools, not just offer technical know-how

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are faculty in postsecondary teaching or trainers in adult-workplace settings	Keep the order (goal, one function, examples in their discipline, plan one class session); replace school release time with a scheduled course-design hour; use a colleague in the same discipline as the follow-up	untested proposal; the claims here are about school teachers

Self Affirmation

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are adult, postsecondary (university gateway course)	Put the exercise in the first week, online or in the first lecture, before the first quiz; repeat before the midterm and final	untested for affirmation with adults in the wiki; the earlier page cites Miyake et al. 2010 (college physics, no claim page). A belonging exercise at college entry is the nearest tested move (Belonging Interventions Improve Outcomes [~M], carried from belonging to affirmation)