Students come to college to learn. They anticipate that through engaging with their faculty in the classroom that they will gain new knowledge and skills, and that this process of attending classes, completing assignments, and performing well on exams will prepare them for their future career. While this may be generally true across institutions of... Continue Reading →
27 Quick Questions to Assess Student Learning
One of the most important aspects of developing residence hall curriculum is the establishment of assessment practices that measure student learning. The use of Bloom's Taxonomy and its related verbs can help in this regard by ensuring that the outcomes we seek to achieve are specific and measurable. But how do we actually do the... Continue Reading →
Beyond Bloom: Writing Progressive Learning Objectives
One of the bedrock concepts of designing residential curricula and learning plans is the ability to write effective learning objectives. Writing effective and measurable learning objectives, however, is often more difficult than it may seem. The deeper one delves into learning theory and curricular design, the more nuanced one realizes these concepts are. One of... Continue Reading →
Residential Curriculum Element #7: Learning is Scaffolded and Sequenced To Follow Time-Based Development
Learning does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place in time and space. A well-designed curriculum recognizes that learning is most often a cumulative process. Individuals learn and grow over time. Sometimes they regress and sometimes they make large leaps forward, but the broad arc of learning is progressive over time. To this... Continue Reading →