Constructive Alignment - and why it is important to
the learning process
What
is Constructive Alignment?
Constructive Alignment, a term
coined by John Biggs (Biggs, 1999) is one of the most influential ideas in higher
education. It is the underpinning concept behind the current requirements for
programme specification, declarations of Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) and
assessment criteria, and the use of criterion based assessment.
There are two parts to constructive
alignment:
- Students construct meaning from what they do to learn.
- The teacher aligns the planned learning activities with
the learning outcomes.
The basic premise of the whole
system is that the curriculum is designed so that the learning activities and
assessment tasks are aligned with the learning outcomes that are intended in
the course. This means that the system is consistent.
Figure 1. Aligning learning
outcomes, learning and teaching activities and the assessment. Adapted from
Biggs(1999) p 27
Alignment is about getting students
to take responsibility for their own learning, and establishing trust between
student and teacher. If students construct their own learning and this takes
place inside the students' brains, where teachers cannot reach, then the real
learning can only be managed by the students. All teachers can do is to create
an environment which is encouraging and supportive of students engaging in the
appropriate and necessary mental activity. We can do this by providing the pieces
and specifications of what the students must become able to do as a result of
modifying their cognitive structures, and set up or suggest activities that
students can use to achieve these changes or intended learning outcomes.
We must have a clear idea of what we
want students to be able to do at the end of a unit of study, and communicate
these intended learning outcomes to students so they can at least share in the
responsibility of achieving them. However, we know that students will
inevitably tend to look at the assessment and structure their learning
activities, as far as they are able, to optimise their assessment performance.
We must therefore make sure that the assessment very obviously does test the
learning outcomes we want students to achieve, that, by being strategic
optimisers of their assessment performance, students will actually be working
to achieve the intended learning outcomes. In other words, the ILOs, the
learning activities and the assessment must all be aligned. The assessment criteria
should differ from the ILOs only in so far as that they might give more detail
of performance levels required for specific rewards. If we tell students that
we want them to achieve something (ILOs) and then assess them against
assessment criteria that do not match, they will feel cheated and will become
cynical strategic surface learners. Alignment is really simply a matter of
honesty and fairness that establishes the trust required for students to be
confident that they can manage their own learning.
Achieving
Constructive Alignment
Constructive alignment is actually
extremely difficult to achieve: it is virtually impossible to get it right
first time, through so-called rational top-down course design. That is why the
ILTHE, for example, emphasises the importance of the reflective practitioner;
the teacher who constantly modifies course design and delivery, constantly
trying to work closer to the unattainable perfect constructive alignment.
Moreover, this is not simply a matter of modifying learning activities and
assessment. Sometimes, in the delivery of a module, assessment outcomes, or our
work with students, reveal learning outcomes we had not anticipated but that we
nevertheless recognise as valuable. These emergent learning outcomes need to be
identified and incorporated into the intended learning outcomes. Constructive
alignment cannot be achieved or maintained in an institutional system that does
not allow frequent modification of module descriptions (figure 2).
Figure 2. Concept map illustrating
the main ideas put forward by Biggs and the relationships between them in the
Curriculum Design Process.
If we are taking a single component
of a programme, we can 'Constructively Align' that course by tackling the
following steps:
- Define the learning outcomes.
- Select learning and teaching activities likely to
enable the students to attain the outcomes.
- Assess the students' outcomes and grade the students
learning.
Setting
the Learning Outcomes
This is how we are intending to
define the course for our students, (though the students maybe influenced by
the assessment). We need to think about the learning as what we want the
student to do. We want the students to 'behave' like engineers making competent
decisions in their future careers; the outcomes should mirror this. As we want
the students to do things, then it makes sense for the outcomes to be specified
in terms of verbs, this will also have the added benefit of leading us to
design assessments that measure the objectives.
In considering the verbs to describe
learning outcomes, we can return to the work on levels and the different levels
of learning. We will probably want to mix the levels of learning required
having some lower level outcomes that deal with the basic facts, as well as
having higher levels that require the students to deal with new situations.
This will provide us with the basis of the learning outcomes for our unit.
For example if we are aligning a
course on networks, then our low level outcomes would be to state Kirchhoff's
Law and Thevenin's Law. However, we also would want extended understanding
where we would expect students to apply these laws to new contexts, perhaps
designing their own circuits.
Selecting
Learning and Teaching Activities
We need to consider activities that
will cause the students to engage with the learning. Course documentation
usually defines the amount of study, in many institutions this is defined in
terms of contact time in lectures and tutorials. However, we have seen (see learning styles)
that these are not the most effective way for the majority of students to learn
as they can adopt passive learning approaches. Consequently, we need to
consider approaches that require participation that is more active and
encourage more high-level learning. Therefore, if we want students to consider
that we expect them to synthesize concepts and link them together then we
should consider assessment activities that encourage that behaviour, such as a
mini-lab project, or a case study such as designing and costing a new power
plant in a location with particular requirements.
Assessing
and Grading the Student
We need to ensure that we assess the
learning outcomes. If we are seeing how the students apply knowledge of the
environment and environmental legislation to new situations then that is what
we should assess. However, we should also consider how we assess the student
and arrive at the final grade. We can take two approaches to assessment. The
first, the traditional norm assessment model, is where we break down the
students 'learning' into their responses to individual questions and sub units,
assigning marks to their 'correct' responses. The problem with this is that it
encourages students to play the assessment game, and go for a mark 'trawl' in
exams, trying to pick-up bits of marks here and there. The alternative is
criteria-based assessment where grades are awarded according to how well
students meet the desired learning outcomes (see table 1 for an example).
|
Objectives
|
Grading
Criteria |
|
Grading will be based on you
attaining the following criteria: |
Grades will depend on how well you
can demonstrate that you have met all objectives: |
|
|
A: Awarded if you have clearly met
all the objectives, displaying deep knowledge of the content, creative
thinking, applying the concepts effectively to new situations |
|
|
B: Awarded when all objectives
have been met well and effectively |
|
|
C: Awarded when the objectives
have been addressed satisfactorily, or where evidence is strong for some
objectives, but weaker in others. |
|
|
F: Less than C, or work not
submitted |
|
|
|
Table 1. A constructively aligned
assessment scheme (adapted from Biggs 2003)
Nearly all degree programmes will
require the criteria grades to be converted to a grade, this is fairly
straightforward; a good ‘A’ gets 78%, a bare ‘A’ gets 70%, and so on. For a more
in-depth discussion of assessment, see Biggs(1999) Chapters 8 and 9.
Advantages
of Constructive Alignment
Constructive alignment encourages
clarity in the design of the curriculum, and transparency in the links between
learning and assessment. In a truly Constructively Aligned curriculum it
facilitates deep learning as the activities are designed for that purpose. This
should improve the quality of learning and graduates in our profession.
Further
Reading
John Biggs (1999): Teaching for Quality
Learning at University, (SRHE and Open University Press, Buckingham)
Norman Jackson (2002) QAA: Champion
for Constructive Alignment! (Imaginative Curriculum Symposium, November 2002)
John Biggs (2003): Aligning Teaching
and Assessment to Curriculum Objectives, (Imaginative Curriculum Project, LTSN
Generic Centre)
Claus Brabrand (2006):
"Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding"
(19-minute award-winning short-film on Constructive Alignment).
URL: [ http://www.daimi.au.dk/~brabrand/short-film/
]
Source
The chapter above was taken from
Houghton, Warren (2004) Engineering Subject Centre Guide: Learning and
Teaching Theory for Engineering Academics. Loughborough: HEA Engineering
Subject Centre.