How to Design an Independent Study
“An independent study is a course or program of study you design for yourself.”
Previously, in “Proposal for an Autodidact’s Degree,” I wrote that “there’s never been a better time in history to be an independent learner.” There are two reasons for this: the first is open access to high-quality learning materials and the second is LLMs.
My theory is that those two things, learning materials and LLMs, plus motivation and a plan, make it possible for you to know as much or more about a topic than someone who’s graduating with a degree in that topic this year. A key difference between you and that graduate is that you’ll be using LLMs to learn, not to avoid learning.
What is an Independent Study?
An independent study is a course or program of study you design for yourself.
An independent study can take many forms. What I outline here is an experimental prototype based on a proposal I made in a previous post. My goal is to rigorously test this prototype myself and make changes as needed.
Much of what we’ll do borrows from my alma mater, City College of San Francisco. CCSF publishes course outlines and degree plans in a way that makes it easy to copy-paste a course or program and modify it to meet your needs. That’s what we’ll be doing here. This approach works well for topics which are straightforwardly academic, like art history, where the topic’s pedagogy is well-established but less so for niche topics. Those will require another prototype which is a project for another day.
For this prototype we’ll be working with two kinds of independent study: the course and the program. The course will be structured like a typical college course, the program like a typical degree program. This will make it easy to copy-paste. This is important because the time and effort of preparing the independent study should be much less than the time and effort of pursuing it. Less planning, more doing.
Isamu Noguchi said:
“I learn by doing and it’s only through doing various projects and imagining myself in the actual process or in drawings and so forth — one learns through the process of making. You can find out how to do something and do it. Or do something and find out what you did. I seem to be of the second disposition. I’ll just do it and try to name it or find out what I did.” (“Noguchi: In His Own Words”)
Designing a Course
Reading the Course Outline
A course is a collection of learning materials, assignments, and assessments.
Every course at CCSF has a course outline, a document which provides important information about how the course works and what it teaches.
The course prototype is based on the idea of using an exiting course outline to design an independent study. As an example for this post I’ll be referencing the course outline for CCSF’s ART 101: Western History Ⅰ course.
General Description
This is basic information about the course including when it was approved by the curriculum committee, when it became effective (i.e., when it could start being taught), the course department, number, and title, and the people involved in its creation or update. This information isn’t important for our purposes today.
Course Specifics
This is more basic information including the breakdown of course hours between lecture, homework, and lab, whether the course has prerequisites, corequisites, or advisories, the course’s “justification” for being offered, if it requires field trips, how it’s graded, and if it can be repeated. Some of this information is important.
Course hours, as lectures, lab, and homework, define how you’ll spend your time in the course. Because this is an independent study you won’t have a lecturer unless you hire one. You could also substitute live lectures with prerecorded ones. MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) and IIT’s NPTEL feature high-quality lectures that would work well for independent studies. Absent a hired lecturer or prerecorded options, you’ll be reallocating the hours to lab and homework.
Prerequisites are courses you need to take before taking a course. Corequisites are courses that need to be taken with a course. Advisories are courses that are not required prerequisites but are advised. These are important because they tell you what information you’ll need to know before you use a course outline.
Catalog Description
The catalog description is a short sentence that appears in the college catalog that describes the course topic.
The catalog description for ART 101 is: “Survey of Western art from the Paleolithic period through the Medieval period. Art will be discussed from critical and historical perspectives with regard to formal visual elements of style and social context.”
Read the course description carefully. It’ll help you decide if the course outline you’re looking at is right for your independent study or whether modifications will be needed.
Student Learning Outcomes
Student learning outcomes, called “SLOs,” describe the knowledge, skills, or experience you’ll acquire if you’re successful in the course.
The SLOs for ART 101 are:
Identify and analyze the formal visual elements and techniques of individual works of art in different media from prehistory through the Medieval period.
Compare the stylistic aspects and trends of art from prehistory through the Medieval period.
Evaluate and differentiate works of art in relation to the historical and cultural contexts in which they were created.
Analyze the historical roles and functions of art, architecture, and the artist.
Notice how each SLO starts with a verb. This is on purpose, an actual requirement of writing SLOs. If you take ART 101 you’ll be able to identify, compare, evaluate, and analyze. Similarly, if you use the course outline for ART 101 for your independent study you should be able to do the same things if you’re successful.
Like with the catalog description you’ll want to read the SLOs carefully.
Contents
The contents section is similar to a book’s table of contents and equally useful. It’s a listing of every subtopic that’s covered in the course. The contents are what would be covered in the lectures, labs, and homework. You’ll need to make sure that your reallocation of course hours provides enough coverage of the contents.
This would be important if, for example, the assigned textbook for a course didn’t cover a subtopic particularly well so it got extra coverage in lectures. This is where you’ll need to be attentive when creating assignments and assessments for your independent study. The contents are a useful blueprint for that.
Instructional Methodology
The instructional methodology section has three subsections: assignments, evaluation, and representative textbooks and other instructional materials.
Assignments can be in-class, like class discussions, or out-of-class, like readings. These will need to be adapted for your independent study.
Evaluation takes the form of graded written assignments, quizzes, a midterm, and a final. You should create written assignments for yourself
The representative textbooks and other instructional materials subsection is the quiet superstar of the course outline. It tells you what textbooks (or other materials) you’ll need for your independent study. Not every instructor uses the textbooks listed in this subsection but most do. You can double-check with the college’s bookstore if you want to be sure a particular textbook is still being used for a particular course.
Using the Course Outline
You can use a course outline for your independent study with minimal modifications.
While most college courses are taught with an instructor and classmates it’s improbable, though not impossible, that you’ll have either. Most of the modifications you make will have to deal with the fact that there isn’t an instructor reviewing your work or classmates to hang out with.
Using LLMs are a creative way to get around this. While I don’t recommend using LLMs to write whole assignments they would be useful in drafting and assessing them. They would also be useful in offering feedback on your work.
Other modifications could include:
Modifying the SLOs. In general, a course is meant to give you new knowledge, skills, and experience, and the SLOs reflect that. If the existing SLOs don’t work for your independent study you can modify them, remove them, or add others.
Substituting textbooks and other materials: If it’s not possible or practical for you to find a particular textbook or edition of a textbook you can make a substitution. Changes between editions are rarely important but it’s worth checking the differences before making a substitution.
Adding or removing topics: If there’s a particular subtopic that’s interesting to you and related to the main topic you can add it. Similarly, you can remove subtopics that don’t interest you.
Adjusting your workload: Most semester-based college courses, like those taught at CCSF, have a duration of about seventeen weeks. You can adopt this yourself or lengthen or shorten it as needed. This could mean changing your daily or weekly workload or it could mean adding or removing subtopics.
Designing a Program
Reading a Program Outline
A program is a series of courses.
Like with courses, every degree program has a program outline. Unlike with courses, program outlines are much simpler. They list the program student learning outcomes, called “PSLOs,” and the courses required to earn the degree. That’s it.
The program prototype is based on the idea of using an existing program outline to design an independent study. As an example for this post I’ll be referencing the program outline for CCSF’s Art History Associate of Arts degree.
Learning Outcomes
The PSLOs for the Art History AA are:
Analyze a variety of techniques and formal visual elements of individual works of art in different media and diverse cultures.
Define and differentiate various styles of art throughout history.
Evaluate works of art in relation to context, historical background, and influence on subsequent artistic periods.
Compare stylistic elements that distinguish aesthetic and cultural trends.
The learning outcomes section also makes clear that the minimum time for completion for the program is four semesters, which is usually two years.
Required Courses
Required courses include core courses which everyone in the program must take, course areas from which one or more courses are required, and electives.
For the Art History AA the core courses are Western art history, modern art history, and a drawing class. The course area requirements are a single non-Western art history course and a single studio arts course. The elective requirement is a single, non-duplicated course from the art or photography department.
Using a Program Outline
Like with courses, using a program outline for an independent study means you’ll need to make modifications. In a conventional degree program you’ll have an advisor who’s monitoring your progress and helping you navigate bureaucratic challenges. You won’t with an independent study. Because of this it may make sense to schedule periodic check-ins in lieu of advising.
Other modifications include changes to the PSLOs, adding and subtracting courses from the program, and creating a program capstone project.
The capstone, a big, portfolio-worthy project that draws on everything you learned, would be a great way to finish an independent study.
What Now?
Design your independent study. You can start with a single course, a handful of courses, or a complete program. Think about your own experiences in college, if you’ve attended, and what you’d like to change. Then do that.
This is an experiment. I recommend trying things. Be ambitious!
Your independent study should be as rigorous as you want it to be. But if you’re going to use the ideas I’ve outlined here it’ll probably be rigorous even by institutional standards. So my advice is that if you choose to do this you give it your all.