Enhancing communication with students with a teaching method based on topical guide objectives

In this paper, we report a case study on employing and adapting a pedagogy based on topical guide objectives (TGOs) [1] in a senior-level undergraduate computing engineering course. According to this method, course materials are divided into a list of TGOs. Homework assignments are assigned to students at the end of every lecture. The assignments are designed explicitly around the TGOs that have been covered by each lecture. Each TGO consists of a learning objective, a set of key-points and basic concepts, correlation among them, and one or more exercise problems. Typically, engineering/science homework is in the form of a set of problems for students to solve. The drawback of this approach is that students often get buried in the technical details and forget about the key points and concepts taught in the lectures. This new form of assignment encourages students to focus on key-points and concepts they learned in the lectures, and learn how to apply them to solve complicated problems. Furthermore, this teaching method informs students of which concepts are fundamentally important. It helps students understand the wording used on quizzes and exams. It also helps build up a positive relationship between students and the instructor such that students could focus on learning instead of testing.