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Aligning goals with my course

The video suggests  that we should use constructive alignment to align students learning to our teaching goals - which involves understanding the learning outcomes and communicating it to the students and then setting the teaching and learning activities to build those competencies during the course. So taking this into consideration, I'm listing the learning outcomes of one course I'm teaching this semester - CIS 1203 Web Technologies, along with the blooms taxonomy the outcomes fall under.

Remember, Understand
LO 1. Describe the evolution of the World Wide Web from inception to the present and explore the technology behind current and emerging web applications. -

Understand
LO 2. Identify and describe the various elements that make up the World Wide Web and the supporting infrastructure and technologies.

Apply
LO 3. Explore the structure of HTML pages with emphasis on emerging technologies, such as HTML5, CSS3, AJAX, and apply HTML/CSS rules to create basic web pages.

 Understand, Apply
LO 4. Understand and apply website structure, planning, design and implementation using a web authoring tool.

Teaching strategies  and Activities
I have used various teaching strategies in this course to introduce these concepts and skills and to align the teaching and learning goals with students learning and assessment. Some examples include:

  • For LO1 - I use direct instruction to explain concepts. This works well since I have small groups of only 16 students in one section and 12 students in another section. Students are involved in a lot of discussion about the topics such as current and emerging web trends. The concepts are reinforced with exercise activities such as collaborative research and self-assessment quizzes etc
  • For LO2 - Direct instruction as well as collaborative research based activities where students are required to research a topic and present it to their peers.
  • For LO3 - Practical exercises
  • For LO4 - Discussions, Exercises and group tasks. 

 Formative and Summative Assessments
Throughout the course students are asked to demonstrate their understanding of concepts and application of skills through various activities, exercises, group tasks that are embedded in the learning process. The Learning outcomes are assessed using graded activities as shown below:

  • LO1, LO3 and Part of LO4- Online Quiz which consists of multiple choice as well as open ended questions. Most of the multiple choice questions are based on cases.
  • LO2 and LO4 - are assessed via a practical exam as well as a group project where the students plan, design and build a website using the tools and techniques they learned
The formative assessments such as activity sheets, group research, practical exercises etc are used to measure a students progress in understanding as well as applying the concepts discussed in class. It is used to see where each student is falling behind and provide him with extra help by assigning a peer coach or extra exercises or even time outside the class to discuss these concepts again with the students.

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