Below are the questions exactly as you will see them in the Flag Proposal System when you propose your course for an Independent Inquiry flag. Your responses to these questions should allow the faculty flag committee to make an informed decision regarding your proposal.
Question 1
Please describe how students will engage in independent investigation and presentation of their own work through the course. Please explain specifically how your course engages students in the process of inquiry in your discipline.
“Process” is the key word here: clearly describe the steps of an inquiry process in your field and how students in the course demonstrate those steps. For general guidelines on how the inquiry process can be broken down, see the Flag learning objectives.
From a faculty member in psychology: Students will first learn several key theories of adolescence. Then they will be asked to select a problem faced by adolescents—for instance, school to prison pipeline, risky drug use, online bullying, listlessness in school, stress and depression—and independently propose a developmental-science-based theory of one malleable cause of the social problem. Then students will go through a user-centered design process to craft a prototype of a novel intervention that might be useful for addressing one of the causes. Finally, students will make a class presentation on their intervention, present pilot data, and write a brief paper outlining their theory and initial prototyping results.
Question 2
What kinds of projects, artifacts, presentations, or performances do your students produce as a result of engaging in this process of inquiry?
While question #1 is focused on the process of inquiry, this question is about the products of that process. Focus on what students will have produced by the end of the semester as a culmination of their inquiry process. These products should resemble what would be expected of a professional in your field.
From a faculty member in environmental science: All students completing the course, regardless of mentor, produce a final report including abstract, methods, results, discussion, and literature cited. This report builds on the proposal submitted at the beginning of the semester and the midterm report completed during the course. Additionally, students produce a poster describing their study and its findings, and are expected to present it at a UT poster session or professional conference.
Question 3
Please explain what independent work students will do in this course. If students are engaged in collaborative or team-based projects, explain how every student will exercise responsibility for and independence with some portion of the project.
These portions should add up to at least one-third of the final grade for a three-hour course (half the grade for a two-hour course; all of the grade for a one-hour course). If students primarily work in groups or teams, describe how students are graded or held accountable for their contributions.
From a faculty member in communication studies: All students must independently identify a research question and collect data that addresses that question. They must analyze the data they collect, organize their findings, and write a paper that shows how the findings address their research question and contribute to extant literature. In addition to a research paper, instructors might also include a second project in which students work as a group to identify a research question, collect observational data that address the question, analyze the data, and prepare a 20-minute oral presentation together. For these projects, group members would be required to participate in every stage of the project. Students would complete anonymous peer evaluations to provide the instructor with information on each member’s participation.
Question 4
What pedagogical strategies do you use to prepare students to undertake the inquiry process in your course? If applicable, how does the work that students produce in this course build upon skills or knowledge they have developed in previous coursework?
The Independent Inquiry Flag is ideally a capstone-style experience, where students are given an opportunity to independently demonstrate mastery in their discipline before graduating. Highlight what skills, content, or other experiences students must synthesize to meet the expectations of your course, gained either from previous coursework or from your course structure. Include any relevant details about where this falls in students’ degree sequences, prerequisite courses, etc.
Sample response from a faculty member in international business: This is the capstone course for the International Business major. As such, in order to successfully complete all assignments in this course (individual case assignments and team-based activities), students will have to draw from their business foundation and integrate past concepts from not only I B courses, but also all other core business courses in Finance, Marketing, Management, etc. in order to solve complex business problems.
Question 5
Please specify what percentage of the students’ grade is based on the process of inquiry described above. Note that for a 3-hour course, at least one-third of the course grade must be based on the students’ independent investigation and presentation of their own work. (Students’ independent work must constitute one-half of the grade for 2-hour courses and all of the grade for 1-hour courses.)
The final product alone does not have to count for one-third of the grade. Assignments in which students independently demonstrate steps in the inquiry process, leading up to the final product, can contribute to the grading requirement. If a syllabus is attached, the responses here should match the course grading scheme.
Sample response from a faculty member in geography: The research component of the class is worth 30% of the final grade. In addition, I estimate that 8% of the participation exercises (worth 20% in total) conducted in class directly relate to the final research project. These exercises include peer-review exercises on the research process or exercises ‘practicing’ research together. Lastly, a note that all the class assignments contribute to the final project in terms of laying the conceptual foundations for the research. The final project process is integrated into the class as a whole, with examples of commodity chain analyses integrated into class lectures, readings and class exercises.
Supporting Documents
You may attach up to three supporting documents, such as a syllabus or sample assignment. Submission of supporting documents is not required, but is strongly encouraged to expedite the approval process.
(Allowed file formats: doc, docx, ppt, pptx, txt, pdf, xls, xlsx)