Aligning teaching and assessment to curriculum objectives John Biggs

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it of factual information -- so and so did that,and concluded that -- for two sides of writing,then you’ll get a good mark. Quoted in Ramsden(1984: 144)If the teacher of this student thought that acritical evaluation of psychological theoriescould be handled by selectively memorizing,there would be no problem. But surely theteacher didn’t think that. I hope not! As ithappened, this particular student graduatedwith First Class Honours. He liked writingextended essays, and held these quick andsnappy assessments in contempt. He made astrategic decision to memorise, knowing that itwas enough to get him through.The problem here? The assessment was notaligned to the aims of teaching. So often therhetoric in courses and programmes is all thatit should be: students will graduate with a deepunderstanding of the discipline, and the abilityto solve problems creatively. Then they are toldabout creative problem solving in packedlecture halls, and tested with multiple choicetests. It’s all out of kilter, but such a situationis not, I strongly suspect, all that uncommon.A good teaching environment is consistent.Teaching and assessment practices are alignedto the aims of teaching.So what does a goodsystem look like?Problem-based learning (PBL) is a very goodexample of aligned teaching. PBL is mostcommonly used in professional degreeprogrammes, such as architecture, medicine,and nursing, but it is also used on more‘academic’ programmes. The idea is thatgraduates should be able to performdifferently in the area of study on graduation,for example to solve professionally relatedproblems. In PBL, the main teaching method isto get the students to solve professionalproblems themselves (carefully selected as todifficulty and content), while the assessment isjudging how well they have solved them. Thereis alignment all the way through, fromobjectives through teaching method, toassessment: all involve focusing on studentsdoing what they should be doing, solvingprofessional problems. Telling them the historyof architectural problem solving, or giving themmultiple choice tests on the knowledge neededto solve problems, or learning the principles ofproblem solving, might be interesting anduseful, but they are not the central issue. Thecentral issue is putting knowledge to work.PBL is an excellent example of an alignedsystem, probably the purest example, but mostapproaches to teaching can be aligned moreeffectively than they are already.What is constructive alignment?CA has two aspects. The ‘constructive’ aspectrefers to what the learner does, which is toconstruct meaning through relevant learningactivities. The ‘alignment’ aspect refers to whatthe teacher does, which is to set up a learningenvironment that supports the learningactivities appropriate to achieving the desiredlearning outcomes. The key is that thecomponents in the teaching system, especiallythe teaching methods used and the assessmenttasks, are aligned to the learning activitiesassumed in the intended outcomes. The learneris in a sense ‘trapped’, and finds it difficult toescape without learning what is intended shouldbe learned.In this Guide, let us focus on aligning asemester length unit or course. There are fourmajor steps.1. Defining the intended outcomes (theobjectives)2. Choosing teaching/learning activitieslikely to lead to attaining the objectives
3. Assessing students’ learning outcomesto see how well they match what wasintended4. Arriving at a final gradeDefining the objectives:the intended outcomesWhen we teach:a. we must have a clear idea of what wewant our students to learn.b. on a topic by topic basis, we must havea further idea as to how well we wanteach topic to be understood.As to (a), we should distinguish betweendeclarative knowledge and functioningknowledge.Declarative knowledge is knowledge that we can‘declare’: tell somebody, read about. Librariesare full of the stuff. It is the basis ofacademic disciplines. But it is usually only thefirst part of the story. We don’t acquireknowledge only so that we can tell other peopleabout; more importantly, we need to putknowledge to work, to make it function. Toreally understand something, you see the worlddifferently, and behave differently towardsthat part of the world. This is obviously thecase in professional faculties; we want lawyersto make good legal decisions, doctors to makeaccurate diagnoses. But we also want physiciststo think and behave like physicists. Aftergraduation, all our students, whatever theirdegree program, should see a section of theirworld differently, and to behave differently,expertly and wisely. Thus, if these are ourobjectives, then simply telling our studentsabout that part of the world, getting them toread about it, and then getting them to tell allthat back to you – in their own words, ofcourse! – is not likely to achieve our intendedoutcomes. Not for the majority of students.The good ones, the ‘academic’ ones, willthemselves turn declarative into functioningknowledge in time, but most will not if they arenot required to.We have to require them to. We have to stateour objectives in terms of what we wantstudents to do. We should require them toperform their understanding, not just tell usabout it.As to (b), our curriculum is usually listed intopics to be covered. Once you’ve told themabout it, that’s it: topic covered. But sometopics are more important than others, theyrequire a deeper level of understanding.Students only need to know about some topics –they know where to go to look it up in future ifthey have to – while other topics must beunderstood at a level that allows them to putthat topic to work, perhaps in a new contextthey haven’t experienced before. So, again,those topics need to be stated in terms of whatthe students are required to do, not what youthe teacher have to ‘cover’ in class, or set asrequired reading.Overall objectives, and topic objectives, arethus about what the student has to do. Thinkverbs.Following are four levels of understanding, withsome illustrative verbs for each level. Ofcourse, each discipline will have its own verbs aswell, and remember that each verb has a topicobject. The following is a general framework,based on the SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs, 2003).Minimal understanding, sufficient to deal withterminology, basic facts: Memorize, identify,recognizeDescriptive understanding, knowing aboutseveral topics: Classify, describe, list.Integrative understanding, relating factstogether and understanding basic theory: applyto known contexts, integrate, analyse, explainthe aetiology.
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Aligning teaching and assessment to curriculum objectives John Biggs

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