Title: Weaving a web of consistency: a case study of implementing constructive alignment
Abstract: How do we get 500 students in a second-year core applied finance subject to grapple with the meaning of some of the basic concepts and ideas of How do we determine whether or not they understand the meaning? What do we mean by concepts of finance? This paper reports and reflects on the outcomes of tackling these challenges by applying, in a cycle of interventions and evaluations over six years, the notion of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999), attempting to maximise the consistency between the subject's objectives, its assessment tasks and its teaching and activities. The central message, repeated consistently through all aspects of the subject, was that learning for understanding is not only possible; it is more satisfying, more resilient, more relevant and more interesting. Feedback from several cohorts of students demonstrates that many students: - regard their experience in this subject as uniquely or unusually satisfying; - will take a deep approach to their learning, if they perceive that this is what assessment tasks demand; - do not enjoy rote memorization for regurgitation, but often see it as the required or only possible approach in some subjects; - prefer workshop classes to traditional lectures, because they can learn actively; - value experiences where they have a chance to try solving a problem first, and then see the teacher show how she would solve the same problem; - prefer qualitative feedback (letter grades plus comments) to numeric marks.
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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