Innovation and Practice of Teaching Mode Based on OBE and BOPPPS—Taking the Communication Course as an Example ()
1. Introduction
To demonstrate China’s ideal and will for the quality management of college course teaching, declare and implement the concept of “student development as the center” and the standard as the core link of talent training, China’s education administrative department proposed “Two-Nature and One-Extent” to standardize the quality standards of college course teaching in June 2018, which means that the course teaching should be high-order, innovative and challenging, to effectively increase the burden on college students and achieve high-quality talent training (Wu, 2018) . Since then, Chinese university courses have successively begun to innovate and reform teaching models. The “Communication Science” course is a compulsory course for media majors. Under the guidance of the “Two-Nature and One-Extent” policy, it introduces the OBE teaching concept and BOPPPS teaching path and uses the “smart teaching” tool to carry out innovation and practice of online and offline flipped teaching models, in order to promote the high-quality development of education and teaching.
2. Concepts
The connotation of “Two-Nature and One-Extent” includes high order property, innovation, and challenge. High-order property involves attributes such as “organic integration of knowledge, ability, and quality”, “cultivation of the comprehensive ability to solve complex problems”, and “advanced thinking”. The connotation of innovation involves three attributes and six categories. First, the course content should be cutting-edge and contemporary. Second, the teaching form should reflect advanced and interactive. Learning outcomes need to be inquiring and personalized. Challenge attributes, that is, the course must have a certain difficulty, students and teachers need to jump together, jump to be able to get, teachers should seriously spend time and energy preparing for classroom lectures, and students should have more learning time and think in the classroom (Song & Liu, 2021) .
OBE (Outcome Based Education), that is, ability-based education, can also be called results-oriented education, goal-oriented education, or demand-oriented education; it mainly refers to the focus of education being the learning outcomes achieved by students after learning (Evans & King, 1994) . OBE emphasizes three basic concepts of “results-oriented, student-centered and continuous improvement”. In 1981, Spady et al. proposed the OBE theory, and since then, OBE theory and methods have been widely used in the education reform of universities around the world, becoming an effective method to pursue educational excellence (Spady, 1994) . In 1989, civil engineering professional groups in six countries, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, initiated and signed the Washington Accord, which is centered on the OBE philosophy, which emphasizes a student-centered and results-oriented approach to education (Hu, 2021) . It is considered to be an international mutual recognition agreement for undergraduate education with the highest degree of internationalization and the most complete system.
In the OBE education system, educators must have a clear vision of the abilities and levels that students should achieve upon graduation, and then seek to design appropriate educational structures to ensure that students achieve these expected goals. Student output rather than textbooks or teacher experience has become the driving force for the operation of the education system, which is clearly in sharp contrast to the traditional content driven and input oriented education. In this sense, the OBE education model can be regarded as an innovation in the educational paradigm (DeJager & Nieuwenhuis, 2005) . OBE is a structural model that organizes, implements, and evaluates education centered around expected learning outcomes. Acharya (2003) pointed out that there are four main steps to implementing the OBE education model: defining learning output, realizing learning output, evaluating learning output, and using learning output, which is the appropriate concept to realize “Two-Nature and One-Extent”.
The BOPPPS teaching model is the theoretical basis of ISW (Instructional Skills Workshop), a widely implemented teacher skills training system in Canada (Pat & Russell, 2006) . The model emphasizes the student-centered teaching concept, modularly decomposes the classroom teaching process, constructs a complete teaching process and theoretical framework for the achievement of teaching goals, provides a new idea and theoretical guidance for old teachers, provides clear ideas and effective guarantees for the achievement of classroom teaching goals, and has become the standard model of Canadian classroom teaching. According to the natural law that people’s attention can only last for about 15 minutes, the BOPPPS model divides the classroom teaching content into multiple teaching units of about 15 minutes. Not only does each teaching unit have the function of “Starting and turning”, but also the classroom composed of all small units is required to follow the context of “Starting and turning”. Specifically, the BOPPPS model divides classroom teaching into six stages and is represented by six English abbreviations: B (Bridge-in): that is, the introduction link before officially entering the course teaching; O (Objective): i.e. establish the learning objectives and expected outcomes of the classroom; P (Pre-assessment): i.e. a pre-test or mapping of students after the establishment of learning objectives; P (Participatory Learning): teacher-student participatory learning, which mainly realizes interactive learning of the core content of the curriculum through teacher-student interaction; P (Post-assessment): i.e. the timely examination or assessment of students towards the end of the class; S (Summary): That is, the summary of this class.
3. Innovation and Practice of the Teaching Model of the “Communication Studies” Course
3.1. Course Development Process
Since the author started the course of Communication in 2010, she has always adhered to the fundamental task of “Morality Education”, aiming at cultivating cultural media people with “integrated knowledge, strong ability, high quality” and both ability and political integrity. In 2019, with the support of intelligent teaching tools, the curriculum introduced Rain Classroom (a new intelligent teaching tool jointly launched by Tsinghua University and Xuetang Online to provide data-based and intelligent information support for all teaching processes) initiating digital teaching reform. Since 2021, the curriculum has been guided by the “Two-Nature and One-Extent” educational policy and combined with the “OBE” teaching concept and the “BOPPPS” teaching model, by establishing a learning community, building a knowledge system that integrates “production, learning, research, multi-disciplinary, ideological and political”, exploring a teaching path that integrates “learning, teaching, research, debate, and use”, and designing a “whole process assessment system” that combines process and summary, systematically carry out BOPPPS-based online and offline hybrid flipped teaching innovation and practice, and achieve good results.
3.2. The Drawbacks of Current Curriculum
There are four outstanding problems in traditional teaching. First, students have a strong dependence on passive learning paths, and a lack of learning enthusiasm and initiative. Second, the phenomenon of mobile phones occupying attention is serious, and the depth of classroom involvement is insufficient. Third, the difficulty and level of students’ learning content are not enough, and there is a lack of innovation and challenge. Fourth, the traditional content driven and input oriented education. Traditional assessment schemes do not have a motivating effect, which is not conducive to students’ sense of gain and achievement in experiential learning (Hu, 2021) .
3.3. Instructional Design
Based on the “OBE” teaching concept, the course is student-centered, and the educational goal of effective integration of knowledge, skill, and quality is constructed. Around this goal, the teaching content, teaching strategies, methods, and assessment system are designed.
In terms of teaching objectives, this course provides support for training media students to master systematic communication knowledge and shape the core competitiveness required by the industry and the qualities of excellent cultural media professionals. Specifically, the knowledge objectives are to take the types of information dissemination and the five elements of communication in human society as clues and master the basic knowledge, classical principles, and cutting-edge achievements that are compatible with the needs of cultural media majors and industries. The ability objectives are to have strong thinking and innovation ability, knowledge understanding and application ability, theoretical exploration, and research ability. Quality objectives are to shape active learning habits, master scientific and effective communication skills, cultivate media literacy with knowledge and elegance, cultivate the collective spirit of unity and friendship, and the excellent qualities of responsibility and courage.
The teaching content of the course consists of three parts: One is the main framework content of the course, including the basic concepts and basic communication principles of communication; five major types of communication: intra-human communication, interpersonal communication, group communication, organizational communication, and mass communication; five research fields of control research, content research, media research, audience research, and effect research. The second content is the cross-integration content of production, learning, research, multidisciplinary, ideology, and politics. The third content is the cutting-edge knowledge of academia and industry. The third is the cutting-edge knowledge of academic circles and industries, which reflects the times of teaching content.
The teaching strategy of the course is designed based on the current situation of learning situation analysis as mentioned above. To address the above issues, this course first breaks through traditional teaching concepts, introduces the concept of OBE, adheres to goal-oriented, student-centered, and task-driven, and highlights the students’ dominant position in the process of learning. Secondly, constructs a learning community that combines individual learning and team learning to stimulate learning enthusiasm and momentum. Thirdly, to adapt to the habits of contemporary college students in obtaining information, the course utilizes intelligent teaching tools to interact with students in a popular manner, allowing attention to return to the classroom. Finally, through questioning and situational case studies, students are encouraged to “move” and “be busy” in the classroom, creating a knowledge generation classroom, questioning reflective classroom, and practical application classroom.
In terms of teaching methods, the courses advance the depth of courses through the path of “learning, teaching, researching, debating, and using”. Self-study before class is arranged to form a preliminary perception of knowledge points. In the classroom, students are encouraged to internalize and apply knowledge to form abilities through problem-oriented, situational stories, case analysis, classroom debates, projects, or book discussions.
As for the examination methods, this course adopts a “whole process assessment” approach, which divides the whole into parts. As shown in Figure 1, The scores are distributed in each online and offline teaching link and learning practice. The “process assessment” before, during, and after class is combined with the “summary assessment” during the mid-term and final periods, and the evaluation between groups is combined with the teacher’s evaluation. The assessment indicators are refined based on the course knowledge, ability, and literacy goals, let students fully feel the “sense of harvest from hard work and the sense of achievement from quality improvement”, and break the rigid path dependence of “lying flat during the process, sprinting when summarizing, and forgetting after passing the exam” brought about by the traditional assessment model.
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Figure 1. Whole process assessment index system.
3.4. Teaching Process
As shown in Figure 2, the teaching process of this course is divided into three stages: before, during, and after class based on the BOPPPS model. Before class, the teacher assigns learning tasks on the smart teaching platform to drive students’ independent learning and exchange learning experience in the task comment area to clarify learning objectives. During the class, smart teaching tools such as voting and brainstorming are used first to conduct pre-testing, and according to statistical results and word cloud diagrams, students’ perception of knowledge points is quickly captured. Secondly, according to the test results, targeted in-class teaching is carried out. In this process, a teacher in the field of
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Figure 2. Online and offline hybrid teaching process based on BOPPPS.
culture and media will be invited to give a lecture on industry knowledge every semester to achieve the integration of industry and education. Third, discussions within the learning community and debating among groups are carried out so as to mobilize students to deeply participate in the classroom and internalize knowledge. Besides, situational case analysis also is used to improve students’ ability to apply theory. Finally, the post-class test is designed through answering questions and tests, to understand students’ knowledge mastery, and then communicate with students specifically for error-prone content. After the in-class learning, students can return to online to expand and improve their cognitive level by reading some challenging and cutting-edge knowledge in the “Learning Resource Pack”, such as the latest scientific research results, industry reports, etc. In addition, two special projects are set up each semester, and the learning community jointly completes them to strengthen the training of knowledge application ability.
3.5. Innovation and Practical Effectiveness
After nearly two years of reform practice, through learning situation surveys, grade analysis, student feedback, and other results, it is found that the reform of this course has achieved remarkable results. 1) In the past two semesters, the overall grades of students have improved significantly, with an excellent rate of 50% and a pass rate of 100% as shown in Figure 3. 2) The achievement of course objectives was good, and more than 80% of the students said that their interest in learning was enhanced, their learning initiative was improved, and their personal media literacy, rational thinking, and innovation ability were trained and improved. As Wang said, “I have made efforts to apply the knowledge learned in class to practical life, developed the habit of scientifically interpreting social phenomena, and developed a certain level of media literacy. This inspires me to closely connect what I have learned with practice, internalize it into my own abilities, and thus improve my professional literacy.” 3) In Figure 4, we can see that student satisfaction with learning was high, 91% of students expressed satisfaction
with the course teaching mode, of which 65% were very satisfied. 4) The main teacher of the course has won two teaching-related awards, published 2 papers on teaching reform, presided over 2 education projects of the Ministry of Education, and led students to participate in the “Telling Chinese Stories and Spreading Chinese Voice” competition and winning 8 excellence awards.
4. Conclusion
This course’s innovative teaching concepts based on the OBE concept combine with the “Two-Nature and One-Extent” teaching goal of effective integration of knowledge, ability, and literacy under the national education innovation policy, and construct a curriculum content and curriculum resource package that integrates production, learning, research, multi-disciplinary, and ideological and political integration. Based on the BOPPPS model, the course integrates a five-in-one teaching method of “learning, teaching, research, debate, and use”. With the help of intelligent teaching platforms and digital teaching tools, teaching modernization can be achieved in a way that is popular with contemporary college students. Through the combination of process assessment and summary assessment, an indicator system is constructed to achieve the entire process assessment.
Curriculum reform and innovation have achieved ideal results through promoting the transformation from teacher-centered to student-centered, and student-output-centered. In the future, based on current construction achievements, we will build a team of teachers, build multimodal curriculum resources, and continue to focus on objectives, content, methods, assessment, and other factors, promote continuous optimization of curriculum reform and innovation, and improve the quality of education and teaching.
Fund
This paper is funded by Education Project of Supply and Demand Docking of Ministry of Education under Grant No. 20230108745, and Education Project of Cooperation between Production and Learning of Ministry of Education under Grant No. 220801208050757.