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InTeGrate Learning Goals Activity
(Adapted by Joshua Caulkins, in part from the On-line Course Design Tutorial ©2005 developed by Dr. Barbara Tewksbury and Dr. R. Heather Macdonald as part of the program On the Cutting Edge, funded by NSF grant DUE-0127310.)
By the end of this activity, you will be able to:
- identify the elements of a "good" learning goal
- critique the learning goals of others
To help you get a sense of what constitutes a "good" learning goal, please review the following goals and provide feedback to each by answering these questions:
- Is the goal student-centered (rather than teacher-centered)?
- Is the goal concrete or is it vague and abstract?
- What Bloom's level could be assigned to this goal? (1-Remember, 2- Understand, 3-Apply, 4-Analyze, 5-Evaluate, 6-Create)
- Is the goal course-level (big picture), unit-level, topic-level, or activity-level (details)?
- How might you make this goal more challenging? (Hint: think "active verb")
- Could you design an activity/assignment/test question that would allow you to determine whether students have met the goal or not (does the goal have a "measurable outcome?")? Explain.
By the end of this (course, unit, topic, activity, etc), you will be able to...
...understand the fundamental concepts of fluid dynamics.
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...appreciate the awesome power of nature.
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...apply geologic knowledge to municipal planning and land use decisions
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...describe, using metamorphic processes, the mechanisms by which heat, mass and fluid are transported in the Earth's crust, and relate them to their plate tectonic environment.
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...describe the seven major disasters covered in the course and explain the geologic process associated with the disasters
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...understand why geologic catastrophes happen in some places but not in others.
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...approach an unfamiliar outcrop, ask appropriate questions, make observations and collect data, analyze these observations and data, make interpretations and/or hypotheses, and make decisions on where to proceed next in the field
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...use a hand lens and basic identification tools, compare and contrast any three mineral or rock samples given to you in a lab setting.
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...examine three seismograms from different stations, locate the arrival of P-waves and S-waves and, given a uniform time axis and a map of the three stations, be able to estimate the location of the epicenter.
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?
...differentiate mineralogical changes due to variable bulk composition from those that result from temperature, pressure, and imposed chemical potential.
- Student-centered?
- Concrete or vague?
- Bloom's level?
- Course, unit, topic or activity-level?
- Make more challenging?
- Design activity?