Aligning Goals with my Course

In my opinion, the thing of utmost importance is to state your goals and objectives lucidly before the commencement of the course and to assess all of these goals in the assessments. This not only becomes the basis of distinction between level 2 and a level 3 teacher but also increases student engagement as they know that what is being taught will be assessed.

For example, if I were to teach the students about the existence of God, a traditional approach would be to just tell the students that yes, God exists. According to Bloom’s taxonomy, this would fall under knowledge as the students just gained a piece of information without analysis or critical thinking.
Thus the methods I would adopt to make sure that not only are all students involved, but also that each one of them uses their higher cognitive power would be to tell the students about phenomena such as the creation of the universe. With the use of multimedia, this awe-inspiring phenomenon could be shown to the students. I would explain the scientific theories such as the big bang theory to the students and would ask them to critically analyse the creation of the universe and to think that there must have been a cause for the big bang. Such a huge thing could not have merely occurred by chance.

I would explain William Paley’s Design Argument which points to the existence of God. Then in order to assess their level of thinking in accordance with Bloom’s Taxonomy, I would ask assign them tasks such as observing anything such as the leave of a tree and to create their own theory about the existence of God. The leaves, ie plants are the only producers of food and have a complex mechanism despite their size. There must have been someone to store the mechanism in them….the way we have to program our computers. Theories like these written by the students would allow me to judge that which student has been evaluating and analyzing and not just remembering. It would tell me precisely where in the hierarchy of Bloom’s Taxonomy does each student fall. 

Moreover, simple quizzes and MCQs would also allow me to assess the understanding of students.

Lastly, I would base the final assessment paper on criteria such as knowledge, understanding and evaluation and not just on knowledge.