Exhibiting and documenting knowledge and understanding: spring 2020 edition

I'm currently teaching an Honors College (HC) course this semester which I first taught last semester. Similar to another HC course I taught during fall 2018, I am utilizing a final project rather than a final exam in this new course. As before, I did not define exactly what they were to do for the final project, at least not in terms of structure or format.

I'm providing the students freedom to demonstrate their accumulated knowledge using whatever approach they chose, as long as they can justify it to me. To get them "thinking outside the box," last week during class I asked the students to form small groups and create a list of all of the possible ways they could imagine which could be used to exhibit and document knowledge and understanding. Each group then reported back to the class, with a group member recording their ideas on the white board. Shown in the pictures to the right are a couple of the lists that generated 68 unique ideas they thought of this semester. This far exceeds the 47 my fall 2018 students thought of, and more than doubles the 30 ideas students in the same course came up with last semester.

As before, I was impressed (and sometimes humored and curious) by the breadth and depth of the ideas the students collectively generated. After we reviewed the lists, I gave them the final project specifications, which are:

Final project: A tangible artifact that records your responses to the course’s essential questions, as it relates to your chosen major(s) and/or minor(s). This will be submitted in two draft iterations, with a third final submission. A brief in-class presentation is also expected.

And our essential questions are:

• What is a computer?
• How do we use algorithms in our lives?
• How has the widespread use of computing technology and algorithms changed the way we work, play, and interact with other people? How much should we let technology do for us?
• What social and legal issues have arisen due to the widespread use of computing technology and algorithms? What new issues are likely to arise in the future?

I could have simply required every student to write a paper and do a presentation. By being learner-centered and allowing each student to determine how they want to exhibit and document their learning during the course, the class and I will be exposed to a wonderful variety of presentations at the end of the semester. My prior experience also suggests that most students will take more ownership of their project than they likely would have of a paper. My firm belief is that if you give your students choice, and they will usually pleasantly surprise you with what they can do.

Having done this activity three semesters, I was curious how the lists compared to each other, so I did a bit of analysis on the respective word lists. After standardizing word forms, etc, I ended up with a combined list of 108 unique words/phrases from the three semesters, including the nearly 70  from this semester. Eight words (7% of the list) showed up on all three semesters' lists.

• book
• dance
• debate
• game
• interview
• test
• theater
• write

Twenty more (19%) showed up two of the semesters: art, blog, brain scan, change, connection, demonstrate, experiment, explain, fashion, interpret, Kahoot!, meme, model, perform, poetry, present, reflect, song, teach, and website. The remaining eighty words/phrases (74%) were unique to one semester. The word cloud at the top of this post provides a visualization of the 108 words, with the size of a word indicating how many semesters that word was reported.

How do you prefer to exhibit and document your knowledge? How creative would you have been? Leave your response in the comments below.

Image credits:

Word cloud created with https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/

47 ways to exhibit and document knowledge and understanding

Last fall, I taught an Honors College colloquium course. Rather than utilizing a final exam to assess their learning, I assigned a final project designed to serve the same purpose. As you'll understand in a bit, I did not define exactly what they were to do for the final project, at least not in terms of structure or format.

I wanted the students to be free to demonstrate their knowledge using whatever approach they chose. I also wanted then to "think outside the box." To force this a bit, I asked the students to form small groups and create a list of all of the possible ways they could imagine which could be used to exhibit and document knowledge and understanding. Each group then reported back to the class, with a member of each group writing their list on a white board. Shown in these two pictures are the 47 ideas they thought of.

I was impressed (and sometimes humored and curious) by the breadth and depth of the lists the students collectively generated. After we reviewed the lists, I gave them the final project specifications, which were:

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Final project

Your final project is to be a tangible artifact that records your responses to the course’s essential questions, as it relates to your chosen major(s) and/or minor(s). This will be submitted in two draft iterations, with a third final submission. A brief in-class presentation is also expected.

Our essential questions are:

• How has the widespread use of computing technology changed the way we work, play, and interact with other people? How will it continue to do so?
• What social and legal issues have arisen due to the widespread use of computing technology? What new issues are likely to arise in the future?
• How well are people able to accurately predict the future? What affects their accuracy?

Iteration 1 of your final project is intended to be a description of how you will be satisfying the final project as described above. 

Iteration 2 of your final project is intended to be a substantial subset of what you expect your final submission of your project to be.

Your final submission and brief in-class presentation are intended to be your best work, and should address the final project, as described above.

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Additionally, in our course management system, I provided further instructions for each submission.

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Final project details

Iteration 1 of your final project is intended to be a description of how you will be satisfying the final project as previously described.

• Provide as much detail as possible.
• Explain how your choice(s) will address the requirements.
• Describe what you expect to have complete for iteration 2, and what will be added for the final submission.
• Describe what your brief in-class presentation will be.

Here is the list the class developed when I asked "How can knowledge and understanding be exhibited and documented?" You may select ideas from this list, or add your own new ideas. [I then provided the above pictures.] 

Iteration 2 of your final project is intended to demonstrate that you have made significant progress towards satisfying the final project as previously described. In Iteration 1, you described what you expected to have complete for Iteration 2. Thus, I'll expect to see that which you committed to, or an explanation of why you were not able to complete it, or why you have chosen a different direction.

Your final submission is intended to be your final product, and should include anything that is feasible to capture in electronic form, including your in-class presentation materials or notes. If your project creates a physical object(s), and you have no other digital version of it, one option is to include a digital picture of the object(s). A brief in-class presentation is also expected. 

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I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing the variety of final projects the fifteen students submitted. The submissions included the following:

• Modified version of the game of Life
• Graphical images of posters on two walls
• Modified version of the game of Monopoly
• Description of the day in the life of a pharmacist today and in 2048
• 12-sided "ball" with each panel describing something, yet connected to the next panel
• Short story
• Illustrated children's book
• Timeline of significant medical events, with current and future patient care plans
• Cartoon
• Automated forecasting model, using Excel©
• Series of blog posts
• Series of podcasts
• Extended essay
• Paper and 3D-printed dental model (jaw with teeth)
• Website

As you can see some of the students used one of the 47 ideas they generated in class, while others came up with even more ideas. I could have simply required every student to write a paper and do a presentation. By allowing each student to determine how they wanted to exhibit and document their learning, the class and I were exposed to a wonderful variety of presentations. I also believe most of the students took more ownership of their project than they likely would have of a paper. So, what did I learn from this experience? Actually, it was more of an affirmation: Give your students a choice, and they will usually pleasantly surprise you.

How would you have exhibited and documented your knowledge if you'd been assigned this final project? How creative would you have been? Leave your response in the comments below.