Aligning goals with my course

From a level-3 teacher perspective we need to focus on what a student does before/during/after teaching and to achieve that we need to use the proper teaching strategies as follows:                                        

● Deal with misconception to correct any misunderstanding before we start teaching new concepts; I start each module with the learning objectives (L.O) of it and what type of assessment & activities will be included in this module (unit) to explore these L.Os, then I go through Q&A session with my students where I ask them directly about some previously studied core concepts  that will be used to construct a new knowledge to correct any misconception and to know my students’ levels as some of them might need more efforts/help to behave in active learning way.    

● Apply interactive lecturing to make sure students get what we want them to learn during teaching.    Clicker, Discussions, Group activities are good examples in this area.  

● Built-in activities/quizzes/assessments/researches/project s within curriculum that reflects students’ understanding/applying/analyzing/evaluating/creating after the teaching

I am using a problem/project based teaching approach in my Computer Hardware & Network course that relaying on creating a case study scenarios and projects which emulate a real work scenarios which give an opportunity to the students to apply their knowledge, some of these activities are group based where each group can discuss & collaborate about certain topic and its application while some other activities are implemented individually based through simulation software and lab activities to ensure student’ understanding. Most of activities with marks and I use it as an assessment way especially the final lab project at end of each module (unit) which test students with the desired L.O (for example Module-1 final project is Construct a computer from physical components and recognize different hardware components and specifications which exactly aligned with the L.O.1)

I periodically give feedback to my students as we do a lot of Lab exercises where I can pinpoint to the area that both of us need to work it out together to enhance it.                                                                                           

This is really active learning model as students do some work in classroom/Lab other than merely passively listening to teacher; I think also lab activities/hands-on experience is a good thing in my course whereas students can measure their understanding (metacognition) and applying the concepts. Plus the assessment is really a reflection to the students’ activities and teacher’s intention.