Reference no: EM133407413

Question

Good discussion Monica, you provided some convincing arguments for why instructors need to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of their assessment methods, as well as specify student learning outcomes. I am a firm believer in the idea of continuous improvement of teaching methods and curriculums and believe that refining student learning outcomes and periodically evaluating the effectiveness of assessment methods help in these areas as you stated in your post. However, I often struggle with balancing the need to organize the class around student learning outcomes and assessments with the desire to encourage and facilitate independent thinking and engagement of the material. Specifically, student learning outcomes alert students to what the instructor thinks in most important while discouraging students from exploring all of the material and ascertaining what they think is important. What are your thoughts on this? Would you consider this a limitation of having student learning outcomes and assessment methods? Does a visible display of student learning outcomes discourage independent thinking and exploration? Explain.