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Setting the Stage:Constructive Alignment

“Scaffolding & Constructive Alignment” by Flickr user Gavan Watson

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Identifying Learners

Light, Tracy Penny; Chen, Helen L.; Ittelson, John C. (2011-11-18). Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors (Kindle Locations 1147-1156). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

Demographic information and personal attributes: characteristics, skills, values, and interests, but also the context of their daily lives.

What characteristics might you use to describe them?

What technologies are they comfortable using? Do your learners use technology a great deal, or a little? Do your learners use social networking tools to share their lives and experiences with friends, family, and colleagues?

Are your learners new to the study in which you want to engage them? In other words, are they novices or are they more sophisticated learners who are looking to either reinforce or master the course materials?

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Sample Learner Profile

Stacy is a second-year student majoring in accounting. She has decided to take the History and Film course because it is on the list of electives from which she can choose. She likes to watch movies, and she thinks watching films for credit will assure her an “easy A.” The last time she took history was in high school and she did not really enjoy it—it was a lot of information to remember and she hated learning about wars and politics. She spends a lot of her spare time keeping in touch with her friends via Facebook, SMS (texting), and Snapchat although she does not really consider herself to be very technologically savvy.

Light, Tracy Penny; Chen, Helen L.; Ittelson, John C. (2011-11-18). Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors (Kindle Locations 1147-1156). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

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1. Develop a short learner profile for the students who will take your class or participate in your program.

2. Identify parts of this profile that you think will impact the instruction, activities, and assessment you’ll undertake.

3. What purpose will the portfolio serve for these learners?

Compile this material on the “Learning Outcomes” page of your mini portfolio.

Folio Thinking

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Identifying Stakeholders (Audiences)

Institutional stakeholders

Students

Faculty instructors

Administrators and other senior leaders

Technical and administrative support staff

Light, Tracy Penny; Chen, Helen L.; Ittelson, John C. (2011-11-18). Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors (Kindle Locations 1147-1156). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

Extra-institutional stakeholders

Alumni

Employers

Mentors

Peers

Family members

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1. Develop a list of key stakeholders (audiences) for your portfolio project.

2. Identify key concerns for each stakeholder you identify.

Compile this information on the “Learning Outcomes” page of your mini portfolio.

Folio Thinking

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Constructive Alignment: Learning Outcomes

Course

Learning Outcomes

AssessmentTeaching & Learning Activities

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Outcomes Based Teaching and Learning

“The logic is stunningly obvious: Say what you want students to be able to do, teach them to do it and then see if they can, in fact, do it.”

Biggs, J. B., Tang, C. S., & Society for Research into Higher Education. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at university. Maidenhead :McGraw-Hill: Open University Press.

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Outcomes Based Teaching and Learning

What type of learning experience you want students to have in your particular course or program?

How will the ePortfolio be used to allow students to make connections to other instances of learning that they experience in other contexts?

When they enter your classroom, will students already be thinking about how to connect the learning that happens in other contexts (e.g., academic, workplace, or community) to the learning that happens in your particular classroom? If so, how will that be documented in the ePortfolio?

Light, Tracy Penny; Chen, Helen L.; Ittelson, John C. (2011-11-18). Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors (Kindle Locations 1068-1069). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

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Goals, objectives, outcomes

Goals reflect the targets for a course or program. Goals are where you want to go, objectives are how you get there, and outcomes are proof that you have arrived.

“Goals, Objectives and Outcomes › Assessment Primer › Assessment › University of Connecticut.” N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Aug. 2014.

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“Goals, Objectives and Outcomes › Assessment Primer › Assessment › University of Connecticut.” N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Aug. 2014.

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Every learning outcome follows a stem, such as: On successful completion of this course, students will be able to: After the stem, you write a list of your learning outcomes, each of which begins with an active verb or phrase that tells students what sort of public, observable activity will be expected of them. Finally, you have the object of that verb – a concept/idea, skill, habit of thought, or value.

Developing Learning Outcomes

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 Cognitive – Concepts, ideas, beliefs, and facts. Cognitive knowledge is “knowing that” and “knowing about,” sometimes “knowing why.” It is also called “declarative” or “propositional” knowledge. Performative – Skills and abilities. These are things that people can do, generally after practice over a period of time, and they’re not usually the sorts of things people can do naturally. Performative knowledge is “knowing how.” At the post‐secondary level, most performative knowledge presupposes and operationalizes a base of cognitive knowledge. Affective – Values, attitudes and emotions. When we’re talking about how we feel about something, our disposition toward it, or about values and principles we use to guide our behavior, then we’re dealing with the affective domain.

Types of Learning Outcomes

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On successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Research and write an article using a form of research methodology employed by compositionists that meets professional standards of style and format.

This is a performative outcome. Here the focus is on students’ demonstration that they can actually research and write using a standard methodology.

What kind of outcome?

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On successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Explain the steps involved in at least two forms of research methodology employed by compositionists.

This is a cognitive learning outcome, because it focuses the students’ attention on demonstrating their knowledge of the steps involved in composition research. Note that it doesn’t require them to demonstrate that they can actually do that research themselves.

What kind of outcome?

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On successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Defend at least two forms of research methodology employed by compositionists with an appeal to the underlying scholarly values and attitudes of composition scholars that they embody. This is an affective and performative outcome. The performative component is a skill (defense, which is a form, of argumentation), but they need to demonstrate that skill by appealing to the attitudes and values embodied in historical research. Clearly, in addition to combining the performative and affective domains, this outcome has two objects as well.

What kind of outcome?

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Unobservable!

Understand

Appreciate

Comprehend

Grasp

Know

See

Accept

Have a knowledge of

Be aware of

Be conscious of

Learn

Perceive

Value

Get

Apprehend

Be familiar with

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The stages of BloomRevised Taxonomy for Cognitive Dimension

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Remembering – the student recalls or remembers the informationdefine, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state

Creating – the student creates a new product or point of viewassemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, writeEvaluating – the student justifies a stand or decisionappraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluateAnalyzing – the student distinguishes between the different partscompare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.

Applying – the student uses the information in a new waychoose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use.

Understanding – the student explains ideas or conceptsclassify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase.

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Curriculum Mapping

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1. What should your students know, understand, or be able to do at the end of your course/program? Make a list that includes two or more goals for your course or program. (Goals)

2. Develop at least two learning outcomes that will enable your students to know that they have achieved your goals for the course. Compose these outcomes so that one of them characterizes activity from the lower three levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Compose the other so that it characterizes activity from the upper three levels. (Outcomes)

Compile this information on the “Learning Outcomes” page of your mini portfolio.

Folio Thinking