Last night’s chat brought up an interesting subject that I hadn’t really considered. In discussing the Final Projects, I asked a couple of people to write up a short “Why?” document to provide some background on what they were doing. That makes so much inherent sense to me — of couse, I need to know if students are actually recognizing and solving the problems — that I never actually wrote that requirement down. It’s not something I can grade, per se. But as we’re considering assessment this week, this really does capture the essence of what I’m trying to do.
Yes, students need to know what to do, and how to do it, but if I can get them to explain why they think they should be doing it, then I think that I’ve got a good handle on whether or not my course was successful.
Perhaps this should be in next week’s material, but I wanted to get it down while I was thinking about it.