Reflection on the Entrance Exam

In education, and especially in collegiate education, tests measure not what matters to students, but what matters to professors. This is on balance a good thing, but it has its shortcomings. One of the biggest drawbacks with standard assignments is that they can fail to respect the different and unpredictable ways a class will educate particular students.

This assignment is one of several ways I am trying to compensate.

In the first week of this course you were supposed to complete an "entrance exam" which polled both your factual knowledge about the New Testament and its background. It serves as a snapshot, albeit an imperfect one, of where you were at the beginning of the semester. Review that examination and look for three areas, on that exam or elsewhere, where this course has affected your thinking–not just informed you about some fact, but spawned an appreciation of why that matters. (So it is not necessary for you to have gone from "I don't know" to knowing the answer; you may have gone from merely knowing a fact to understanding its broader significance or affecting your thinking.)

Describe how the course (lectures, videos, readings, class time, conversations with students, and/or written assignments) has changed your thinking. You can address those three topics either one at a time or together.

If the greatest transformations are in matters that are not addressed on the entrance exam, then please feel free to address them instead.

I love seeing proper style, clear writing, a thorough answer to the question, and explicit citations of course materials.

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