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Clarity in the curriculum: Using Constructive Alignment to improve your module
- 1. Clarity in the curriculum: using Biggs’ Constructive Alignment to improve your module Email: emma.kennedy@qmul.ac.uk Twitter: @Emma_EdDev Dr Emma Kennedy Queen Mary, University of London
- 2. After this workshop, you will be able to Identify the basic tenets of John Biggs’ ‘Constructive Alignment’ theory Analyse a module/course on which you teach, assessing the extent to which it is constructively aligned. Reflect on criticisms and nuances of constructive alignment. Produce a change, or changes, that will make your module more constructively aligned.
- 3. Sections in this workshop What is constructive alignment? Alignment in practice: align your module Issues and complexities of constructive alignment Changes you can make in practice
- 4. Constructive Alignment Constructivist Learning Theory (Jean Piaget: Ginsburg & Opper, 1987, Steffe & Gale, 1995) Students ‘construct’ knowledge for themselves through what they do. We cannot simply put information into students’ heads: we present information and they construct their knowledge from what we have presented. What the student does is therefore as important as what the teacher does.
- 5. Constructive Alignment “The learning activity in the intended outcomes, expressed as a verb, needs to be activated in the teaching if the outcome is to be achieved and in the assessment task to verify that the outcome has in fact been achieved.” (Biggs, 1999, p. 52) Outcome: Student will be able to translate a simple sentence from German into English. Teaching: Students practise translating simple sentences from German into English. Assessment: Students are tested on whether they can translate a simple sentence from German into English.
- 6. Marton & Saljö (1976): how students learn How to make sure students are ‘deep’ learning rather than just learning to regurgitate facts? • Focus on the facts • Able to repeat information but not explain it • Sees individual parts but not big picture Surface Learning • Sees the big picture • Aims to contextualise information, not just repeat it • Understanding processes and deeper meanings Deep Learning • “Will this be on the exam?”Strategic
- 7. Alignment helps defeat strategic learners ‘from a student’s point of view, the assessment always defines the actual curriculum’ (Ramsden, 1992). Aligned assessment Strategic learners move themselves closer to the ILOs
- 9. Constructive Alignment Module intended learning outcomes Module teaching & learning activities Module level assessment Could a student reasonably be expected to fulfil the ILOs after undertaking the teaching in the module? Does the assessment measure the extent to which students have achieved the module ILOs?
- 10. Section 2: Alignment in Practice In this section you will align your own module Think of a module you currently teach on or one you would like to teach (60 seconds) Write down the module title.
- 11. Alignment 1: Intended Learning Outcomes Phrase learning outcomes in terms of what the student will be able to do rather than what the lesson will cover. For example, instead of “This module will cover the basics of the English Reformation” we might have: “By the end of the module students will be able to: (1) Identify the key dates in the English Reformation (2) Outline the main causes leading up to the English Reformation (3) Describe the principal changes caused by the English Reformation” Verbs are key: what will you want students to do with the knowledge?
- 12. Write some Intended Learning Outcomes! Take 5 minutes to write 3 Intended Learning Outcomes for a module that you will teach/have taught Using the format: ‘By the end of this module students will be able to’ REMEMBER YOUR VERBS!
- 13. Bad verbs for ILOs “understand” “know” “have knowledge of”. A good test of your ILO Could you see it happening in the classroom? Could you assess it? Example error “By the end of this lesson, students will understand the process of photosynthesis” Signs this is an error Understanding in and of itself cannot be seen happening Understanding in & of itself – without action, even writing – cannot be assessed. We do not assess understanding but action Different actions show different levels of understanding. Decide what level you want the student to show by deciding what you want them to do. How did you get on?
- 14. Alignment 2: Teaching & Learning Activities • Teaching and Learning Activities should help students achieve the outcomes specified in the ILOs. • They can use the same verb as the ILOs but they do not have to. After this session, students should be able to: 1. Describe the plot, characters and principal themes of Shakespeare’s Macbeth 2. Analyse the links between Macbeth and its historical context 3. Reflect on the role and validity of historical context in shaping literary-critical views of the play Students read Macbeth before class & in class take a quiz that asks them to identify characters and plot points (1) Students are asked to get into groups, recap the plot of Macbeth and major themes, then present to the class (1) Whole-class discussion in which the class is asked about Macbeth’s links to historical context (2) Students give presentations on key scenes & their relation to the play’s historical context (2) Class are asked to debate on the validity of historical context: divided into pro- and anti. (3) 60 second ‘minute paper’ in which students reflect on how historical context affects their view of the play (3)
- 15. Teaching & Learning Activities: your turn • Go back to the ILOs that you wrote in the previous section • Take 5 minutes to come up with at least one teaching and learning activity for each ILO. If you can think of more, that’s great. • Remember the TLA must help the student to achieve the ILO in question.
- 16. Alignment 3: Assessment Assessment tasks should assess how far the student has achieved the learning outcomes that were set. • Students will be able to put together an IKEA Billy Bookcase. Intended Learning Outcome • In the classroom, students took apart Billy Bookcases and practiced putting them together again. Teaching & Learning Activity • Students are assessed on their ability to put together a Billy Bookcase. • Marks will be awarded for speed, accuracy, quality of construction. Assessment
- 17. Assessment: your turn • Now go back to your Intended Learning Outcomes and Teaching & Learning Activities. • Design an assessment task that would assess how far a student has achieved at least one of your ILOs. • What do they have to do? What constitutes success in this assessment? What criteria will you use? • Take 10 minutes.
- 18. Criticisms of constructive alignment theory Simplistic Drowns out the student voice Assumes transferability
- 19. Criticisms of constructive alignment theory Simplistic? “Not all students may be capable of serendipitously acquiring unintended learning outcomes, and therefore, to include them in assessment is manifestly unfair” (Onsman 2015, 2)
- 20. Criticisms of constructive alignment theory Drowns out the student voice? “For teaching to be student centred the student voice should be at the heart of both what is learnt and how it is learnt. In addition there should be a shift of power towards the students and away from the tutor. But can this be achieved if the 'authority' pre determines learning outcomes and objectives and the assessment methods?” (Scott, 4) Ways to include the student voice Allow them a choice between two (well- aligned) activities Use previous evaluations to shape a module Conduct a mid- module evaluation and follow through Ask them to use module-level outcomes to come up with session- level outcomes Ask them to judge their own work on how well it fulfils the module ILOs
- 21. Criticisms of constructive alignment theory Assumes transferability?
- 22. What can you do? 5 minutes Reflect on the workshop and think of one change you’d like to make 5 minutes Share with your neighbour
- 23. References Biggs, J. (1999) Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student Does, Buckingham, UK: SRHE & Open University Press. Ginsburg, H. and Opper, S. (1987) Piaget’s Theory of Intellectual Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Marton, F. and Saljö, R. (1976a) On qualitative differences in learning – I: Outcome and process, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46, 4-11. Marton, F. and Saljö, R. (1976b) On qualitative differences in learning – II: Outcome as a function of the learner’s conception of the task, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46, 115-27. Onsman, A. (2015) Constructively aligning the curriculum of a “New Generation” Bachelor of Environments degree from a social realism perspective, Cogent Education, 2(1). Ramsden, P. (1992) Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London: Routledge. Steffe, L. and Gale, J. (eds) (1995) Constructivism in Education, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Scott, I. (2011), The Learning Outcome in Higher Education: Time to think again?, Worcester Journal of Learning and Teaching, 5, n.p.
Editor's Notes
- There are 4 sections in this workshop. In the first I’m going to talk a little bit to you about what constructive alignment is; in the second, we’ll look at alignment as it relates to a module you know, and you’ll be having a go at alignment yourself. In the third section I’m going to explore some of the issues and complexities that can arise, and in the fourth and final section I’ll ask you to think about changes you can make in practice.
- So what is constructive alignment? As you might guess from the name, it’s based on constructivist learning theory. This theory was developed by a psychologist called Piaget in the 1950s but is still relevant today: It states that students do not simply receive information passively, but instead actively construct knowledge based on what they do. So if you tell me how to bake a cake, I don’t just put that information in my brain: I take it in and reconstruct it, imagining myself going through all the steps, perhaps in my own kitchen, and then I assimilate this knowledge into what I already know. And if you really want me to learn to bake a cake, you don’t just tell me: you take me through the steps and make me do the actions myself. This means that education is not just about what the teacher does: it’s also about what the student does. It acknowledges that students are individuals, and bring their own pre-existing knowledge and opinions to class. It reminds us that telling someone something is no guarantee that they know it. The only way we can know that someone can do something is to see them do it.
- And seeing them do it is the basis of the constructively aligned curriculum. The alignment bit refers to how we ‘align’ the curriculum in acknowledgement of this constructivist view of learning. In an aligned curriculum the learning outcome is expressed as a verb: it’s not about what the teacher does but about what the student will be able to do as a result of the learning. We need to pin down what the student will do rather than what they know because the only way we know that someone knows something? Is by them doing something. That might be writing about it, or telling us about it verbally – it doesn’t need to be a practical skill like baking a cake. That verb is then used to plan the learning activities – what the students do in class – and the assessment. This doesn’t mean that they will only do what is in the learning outcomes, but what they do in class should work towards the learning outcomes. For example, if your learning outcome is that students will be able to bake a cake, you might get them to practise measuring out ingredients, sifting flour, mixing together the butter and sugar, folding in flour, icing a cake – et cetera. In the example I have here on the board, you can see how a learning outcome translates into an activity and assessment. Now this might break down into more complex tasks. For instance you might want students to practice their grammar in one section and their vocabulary in another section. You would probably break down the assessment into different aspects of a ‘good’ translation such as grammatical accuracy, quality of English, breadth of vocabulary, and any other aspects. You get to decide that. The important thing is that they all link together.
- Here’s a discovery that partly inspired constructive alignment. Marton and Saljo, a pair of Swedish researchers in the 1970s, discovered that if they gave students a text and then tested them on it, they would take one of two approaches. The ‘surface learners’ did what they called ‘skating along the surface of the text’, memorising and regurgitating factoids without putting them in context. The ‘deep learners’ went much further, trying to understand the text as a whole and what the author was trying to say. This is mirrored in what students do at university: some take a ‘deep’ approach, listening to information and putting it into context, connecting it with other things they’ve learned. Others take a surface approach, just learning the facts and not connecting them. For example, some students will seem to understand information in one seminar but be unable to apply it in a different situation or relate it to things they learn in other lessons. The original two, deep and surface learning, were joined by a third – strategic – later on. This is probably the most familiar to you – it’s when students try to concentrate effort on stuff that they think will help them do well in the assessment. So they will ask you ‘is this important’ and ‘does this need to be on the exam?’. This happens when students feel unsure, overloaded or both: they attempt to second-guess the curriculum. SO – we all know which one we want students to be doing – deep learning. How do we make sure they do it? It was in response to this question that John Biggs actually came up with constructive alignment, as a way of designing curricula so that teachers have a way to check that students are doing the deep activities we want, and so that we can spot the surface and strategic learning when it happens. It’s a recognition that, as much as we’d like it to, deep learning doesn’t always happen naturally – we need to design the curriculum to encourage it.
- We don’t want students to be strategic but they often will: if the assessment is aligned to the learning outcomes, then even when students are being strategic they will also be finding the most efficient way to fulfil the learning outcomes of the module. Alignment thus helps us to plan ahead and design our module so that even if learners try to be strategic, they still end up fulfilling the ILOs.
- Making learning clearer and being explicit about the outcomes also helps students take responsibility for their learning. We can explain students what we want them to do, and thus help them to focus on doing it. It also makes things fairer. When a curriculum is unclear, students with certain privileges, such as familial experience of higher education, will have an advantage over those who don’t as they are able to see ‘unwritten’ rules. Constructive Alignment aims to bring those ‘unwritten’ rules into the light – and be clear with students about expectations and assessment. Clarity also enables deep learning. Constructive alignment has been criticised as ‘simplistic’: but simplicity of demands means that students can focus themselves on achieving these, rather than worrying about what they are. This removes a lot of anxiety and frees students to learn deeply in the knowledge that they are also doing things that will be useful for the assessment.
- Constructive alignment can also be mapped on to a module. This might mean that you have to revisit the outcomes of a module, as there are more intended learning outcomes than you can reasonably assess or teach. This is what makes it a useful tool for clarifying and streamlining the curriculum. It forces us to look realistically at what we can actually ask students to learn and to do over the course of the module. As I’ll argue later on, this isn’t to say that the learning outcomes are the only thing that happens during the module. Quite the opposite. While students are learning, they will each be developing all sorts of interesting skills or even gaining extra knowledge. But this isn’t always within our control. With constructive alignment, rather than trying to determine everything that students learn, we step back and clarify which aspects are important enough for us to carry out explicitly in the classroom, and to assess. Other things – they are for the students to do. We just have to worry about what we can see and assess. So my benchmark for a single module is between 5 and 8 learning outcomes – I lean towards fewer things and then it’s easier to break them down into activities and measurable assessments. Looking at your module, you should be able to plan the teaching and learning activities – that is, what students actually do on the module – so that they could reasonably be expected to lead to a student fulfilling all the ILOs. If they don’t, your ILOs are probably too many or too ambitious. So too, the assessment should measure the extent to which students have achieved the ILOs. Your ILOs should be written in such a way that they tell you how they can be assessed – and in fact we’ll come to that in a second.
- In this section we’ll look at the process of alignment in a lot more detail, and think about the processes actually involved in creating a module or a course that is constructively aligned. For this, I’m going to make you do this alongside with me – this will help you to think concretely about alignment using your own teaching experience and context. It’ll also make it much more interesting! You’ll need to have a module in mind. It could be one you already teach on, or one you run yourself. If you don’t currently teach on a specific module or in a modularised curriculum, think of a module that you know about – it could be one you’d like to teach, or one you studied on as a student. [click] take 60 seconds now to think of one. [click after 60 seconds] Write down the title of the module, if you haven’t already.
- When writing learning outcomes, a lot of people make the mistake of writing down what the lesson will cover. But this is really not that useful in terms of thinking about what the student does. As we know that students construct their own learning, it’s pointless to say ‘in this lesson I will cover the English reformation’. We know this. I know this. But how do we know it’s been a successful lesson – if I succeed in covering the English Reformation? That’s an outcome for the teacher, not the student. And it’s the students we need to pay attention to. While I’m covering the English Reformation, students could be learning about it on a deep, or surface level, or not at all. I need to write Intended Learning Outcomes that focus on what the student will do, not what the teacher will do. [click] These are much better: they are phrased in terms of what the students will be able to do by the end of the module, and at what level. [click] When writing Intended Learning Outcomes, always think about your verbs. What do you want students to be able to do?
- Now it’s your turn! Take 5 minutes to write three intended learning outcomes for a module that you will teach. They do not have to cover everything that happens in the module, they just need to give a flavour of what you expect students to come out with.
- So how did you get on? Did you fall into the common trap of using words like ‘know’ and ‘understand’. These are common mistakes – it’s natural to want your students to know things. The problem is that ‘understand’ is a very vague word. It’s like ‘good’ – it can mean a lot of things. To different people, for example, ‘understanding’ cakes might mean: being able to bake a cake; being able to explain the history of cake in the United Kingdom; being able to describe cake-related traditions from a variety of countries; being able to distinguish between different varieties of British cake; etc etc. You get the point. If you have a learning outcome that says ‘understand’ it makes it very difficult to come up with classroom activities or assessments that align with that. Students don’t “understand” something out loud: they ‘analyse’ it, they might ‘describe’ it, or ‘compare’ two things – and THOSE later ones are the verbs you want in your learning outcomes. That way you know exactly what you want to see your students doing. A good way to test this is to look at your ILO and ask two things: could you identify it if it was happening in the classroom? And could you assess it if it did happen?
- Teaching and learning activities for your module should help students achieve the outcomes specified in the ILOs. They could be the same as the ILOs but they definitely don’t have to. Most outcomes can be, and should be, broken down into several parts – especially when you’re teaching someone to do something. I might want a student to learn how to do an abdominal examination, but I’d make them practice the different stages – I wouldn’t just make them do a whole examination over and over again. This is especially true in modules which run over a semester. Measure your Teaching and Learning Activities against your ILOs: do they help students achieve the ILOs? I find this is an excellent way to defend your class against the tos and fros of educational faddism. Will I use a fancy new technological tool in my classroom? Only if it helps students get closer to the ILOs? [click] here are some example activities that might relate to a set of ILOs. As you can see, they aren’t always exactly the same, but they do mean that students will be demonstrating skills that are also necessary to achieve the ILOs.
- Now it’s your turn. Go back to your initial ILOs and take 5 minutes to come up with at least one activity for each ILO. Think about what the student will be doing during this activity. What will you be able to see them doing, and how will that help you to see whether they are coming close to achieving the ILO?
- Assessment tasks. Again, these might look slightly different from the ILOs – they don’t need to be exactly the same. But they do need to assess the abilities which the ILOs talk about. So here, the ILO is ‘put together a Billy Bookcase’, and the assessment assesses students ability to put together a Billy Bookcase. The criteria break down the task in various elements of putting together a bookcase – they also might break down into various ILOs.
- Now I want you to take 10 minutes to look at your own ILOs and activities, and design an assessment task that aligns with at least some of them.
- There are several potential criticisms of constructive alignment theory, as you can probably imagine. The first and biggest one is that it can be quite simplistic. It reduces a module’s worth of complex knowledge to a set of learning outcomes and the achievement thereof. [click] The second one is that it drowns out the student voice. In a constructively aligned curriculum, there is such a strong link between learning outcomes, teaching activities and assessment that it can feel like there is no room for anything else. If the ILOs, and therefore the activities and assessment, have already been decided, then [click] The third criticism is that it assumes concepts can be transferred between learning outcomes, activities and assessment. What if you want students to come out with a skill that isn’t assessable?
- Let’s take the first one – is it simplistic? In my opinion, it provides clarity – which is not simplistic in the negative sense, but rather acknowledges that actually there is a limited amount that we can control. This doesn’t mean that students can only learn this limited amount; but it does mean that we can only make them learn, and assess, a limited amount. Beyond that what they learn is outside our control, and we should appreciate it without trying to influence it via the curriculum. For example, I teach people who are learning to teach in higher education. Each of them works in a different teaching context and each of them has different experiences, interests and needs. So each of them will take away something different from each lesson I teach. My learning outcomes are maybe three or 4 in each session – but they will change their teaching in many different ways outside that. And I acknowledge that informally, talking to them and listening to what they do. I don’t assess on this, because not everybody has the opportunity to change things all at once. In my curriculum there is space for unintended learning outcomes and things which sit outside the alignment – but students are also clear on what they have to do to pass. They know that there are lots of things they can do that are great, but they also know what they have to do, and how they will be assessed. This clarity frees them from trying to second-guess my curriculum. They can focus on what they need to do to do well, while also spending time pursuing their own interests within the course. [click] Onsman sums this up well when he says that ‘Not all students may be capable of serendipitously acquiring unintended learning outcomes, and therefore, to include them in assessment is manifestly unfair’. Not everyone can get the same out of every course. Constructive alignment doesn’t deny differences but is rather a way of acknowledging them: because it doesn’t try to assess, or influence, them. This is clarity, not simplicity.
- Ian Scott from the University of Worcester has written a paper about whether it’s time to rethink the learning outcome – which will be linked in the last slide of this presentation. In it he writes: “For teaching to be student centred the student voice should be at the heart of both what is learnt and how it is learnt. In addition there should be a shift of power towards the students and away from the tutor. But can this be achieved if the 'authority' pre determines learning outcomes and objectives and the assessment methods?” This is a really good point, and it’s something we should bear in mind when aligning the curriculum. But in my mind it’s also something that can be overcome. [click] There are several different ways to give students a voice within an aligned curriculum. The first one is to allow them choices between different activities in class. You can pre-design or select activities that you know will help students to achieve the ILOs, and allow students to choose between them. This also saves a lot of time – it’s much quicker to have students vote on an issue than it is to have them decide on a learning outcome. Another is to take student evaluations seriously and use them to shape the course. You can then make it clear to the present students that aspects of the course have been shaped by students. You can even carry out an evaluation in the middle of the module and then implement something in the following seminar. You can get students to use the ILOs of the module – with which they should be familiar – to come up with learning outcomes for each session, or at least think about it. You could even ask them to judge their own work on how well it fulfils the learning outcomes. OF course, all of this does limit the amount of influence students have in the module, as they can’t define the module-level learning outcomes. However, in my view that’s OK. Firstly because in our university module-level outcomes are set and approved by a large number of boards before it ever becomes a module. This means that a change couldn’t be implemented in time for students to actually choose outcomes and take the module. Secondly, I find that students are actually more keen to contribute when they can do so within a structured framework. If I ask them to come up with a learning outcome they will probably be quite fazed, but if I give them structures like those in the table, they are usually much happier to contribute. Thus, although their sphere of influence is more limited, more students are likely to contribute – and I’m more likely to implement their suggestions.
- The third criticism is that constructive alignment assumes that all Intended Learning Outcomes can be assessed and worked towards with teaching and learning activities. What if you want something from your course that can’t be assessed? You might want students to become more confident in their use of vocabulary, for example, or to appreciate how interesting a subject is. There’s no real way to assess these things. Does that mean you can’t want them? No, it doesn’t. What constructive alignment does is force us to distinguish between aims – what we want our course to do in general terms, what we want for our students – and Intended Learning Outcomes, which we will work towards and measure at the end. This doesn’t deny the existence of non-assessable aims but rather takes a realistic view of them and asks us to be clear about which is which. That way, we don’t have to worry about our aims being assessed. Those that are not assessable aren’t usually verifiable, and though we can work towards them with students, it’s much harder to do so explicitly and to prove that we’ve done so. So we don’t need to abandon them – but we either translate them into something that can be verified, or we acknowledge that they need to remain aims –something that colours the way we design the course, but that we don’t integrate into the assessment. Which tends to make sense for aims. You might want students to enjoy a novel, but you wouldn’t award marks for enjoyment on the exam. It also forces us to make our outcomes more clear. If you’ve got an outcome that you think is both important enough to be an outcome, rather than an aim, and impossible to assess, ask yourself: do I need to rephrase this outcome? If it’s that important, don’t I want to make it part of the assessment? And if I can’t assess it, it’s not clear what it involves – so don’t I want to make it clearer to students what they should be doing to achieve that? So in answer: constructive alignment doesn’t assume transferability, but rather acknowledges that some things don’t transfer well across the curriculum – and that in those cases, we should be realistic about how we can use them.