muraPOI: November 14, 2012
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Targeted Skill Development: Building Blocks to Better Learning: I’ve never quite thought of my course syllabus in these terms. It argues against the “firehose” that could describe most of the classes I took. Certainly in engineering, the point of many university classes seems to be to add as many new equations and concepts as there are minutes in the class.
“They should begin by thoughtfully considering what knowledge and skills their students don’t have. Yes, in many cases the list will be long. Just as thoughtfully, the next step is to identify the knowledge and skills that are most essential for success with this content and in light of what students will be learning in their next courses. That should make it possible to narrow the list and identify the two or three most important skills which can then be targeted for development in the course.”
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Gimme an A! Confronting Presuppositions about Grading: Earlier this year I read an article what I’ll paraphrase as: if our goal in our courses is to make sure students succeed, shouldn’t they all be getting A’s? This article confronts the same issue, as well as touches on the grading rubrics that I discussed previously (at least I think I wrote about it previously).
“Generally the arguments against giving all students an A seems to stem from a main presupposition: that all students cannot succeed at a high level, that the purpose of grading is a process of selection. The idea, when pressed, seems to be both vague and deeply held and is usually exposed by phrases like, “That’s just the way it is,” or, “All students do not have equal abilities.””
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Getting Answer-Oriented Students to Focus on the Questions: This article’s about having students write exam questions as a way to better understand the course materials.
The strategy also deepens understanding and makes student thinking more precise, especially if they write questions that classmates must try to answer. In my classes, students wrote potential exam questions related to text material not discussed in class. They brought copies of those questions for the rest of the class, answered them first individually, and then in groups during the review session. Poorly worded, unclear, confusing questions generated all sorts of good discussion about questions and content.
