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Tips marked with an * indicates that the tip is consistent
with learnng-centered teaching
Objectives and Learning Outcomes
*Using appropriate verbs to describe student
learning goals
Dee Fink's new book, Creating Significant Learning Experiences
has a great taxonomy of different kinds of significant learning.
If you want students to achieve learning in the domains (the major
aspects of his taxonomy) on the left use a verb on the right for
your learning goals:
domain learning goal verb
fundamental knowledge understand, identify application critique,
solve, assess, judge, analyze, create, coordinate, etc.
integrate connect, relate, compare, identify the interactions, similarities,
etc.
personal dimension come to see self as, interact with others regrading,
decide to become caring get excited about, involved with, value
learning how to learn set a learning agenda, identify sources of
information on, frame useful questions on
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*Gathering evidence of student learning
outcomes
Middle States has told us that we must develop statements of learning
outcomes for every program and for every course. Now while you are
grading your papers, tests, etc. make a few extra copies of these
student products to show that you have achieved the learning outcomes
desired for your courses. Remember a learning outcome should be
more than just knowledge
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*Making explicit our expectations for students
We often assume that students know what we expect from them. Students
may not have such a clear idea of their expectations. Therefore,
be as explicit as possible in your syllabi about your expectations
for students.
For example, if you want students to take responsibility for their
own learning, state that and state what they and you will do to
help them reach this goal.
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*Reviewing your courses to improve them and help students to reach
the learning goals
As you organize your files on each course that you teach, consider
how well your students meet the goals of the course especially those
goals that go beyond mastering factual information. Were your students
able to demonstrate their problems solving, evaluation and integration,
self-directed learning skills? Perhaps you need to better align
your objectives for the course with how students spend their time
in class and on assignments and how you evaluate them for the students
to meet the greater objectives.
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Stating goals for a course
When you state goals for a course, state them in terms of what
you expect the student to be able to do at the end of the course.
Think about what you do as a professional and then how can you translate
that into what you expect students to be able to do at various levels
of competency. Goals state this way should logically lead you to
planning how and what to teach, how the students will engage in
the material and how you will assess the students.
These type of goals can be used for a syllabus for students, for
a course approval process and for accreditation or program evaluation
purposes.
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*Making sure students confront and overcome
misconceptions
Students need to confront their own misconceptions to really understand
your discipline. These misconceptions come in the form of lay knowledge,
stereotypes or where the common sense is not backed by science or
evidence. Giving students the opportunity to confront these misconceptions
have implications for course planning, in terms of what you ask
the students to do, how you teach the course and assessments. For
example, you could ask students on final exams to explain principles
that are often misunderstood or to describe a misconception that
they had and the more accurate explanation.
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Gathering baseline data if you are thinking
of doing any scholarship of teaching and learning
Many faculty talk to me about doing some scholarship of teaching
and learning after they have implemented an innovation or once they
feel a course is going well. This leads to a problem in doing an
assessment or collecting pre and post data, in that you cannot go
back and find out what the students knew before the course. Therefore,
if you are planning to do any scholarship of teaching and learning
on a course or want to determine how much students improved on a
specific component, you need to collect some baseline data as you
begin the course.
Think of a characteristic that you want to measure students' improvement
or growth. How can you quickly assess students on this characteristic?
Some suggestions may be to interpret a complex table, asking students
to do a proof, analyze a paragraph of text or reading, diagram a
concept or develop a flowchart. At the end of the semester you can
ask students to do the same thing or something very similar and
compare their scores. Then you have pre and post measure.
The Angelo and Cross book on Classroom Assessment Techniques have
many ideas of what you can assess quickly and then how to analyze
the responses. (I have multiple copies of that book)
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