Today was father’s day, and we spent the afternoon with the grandparents. The children were wild and had a lot of fun. This evening I continued watching asynchronous assessment sessions from the 2021 Lilly Conference online. Alisha Malloy and Laurell Malone from North Carolina Central University presented a session entitled “The Assessment Blueprint – Aligning Learning Outcomes and Assessments.” They defined learning objectives as “statements of the specific and measurable knowledge, skills, attributes, and habits learners are expected to achieve and demonstrate as a result of their educational experiences in a program, course, or module” and compared them to course-level objectives and student learning outcomes or module level objectives that “… break down skills and knowledge into very specific, discrete skills students should acquire by the end of a particular assignment, class, course or program.” I appreciate their level of detail and the clear description of the differences between learning objectives and course objectives or student learning outcomes. I had not considered habits as part of learning objectives. The presenters then played a video from ACUE featuring Professor Thomas A. Angelo discussing student-centered learning outcomes. I had watched the short video before, and appreciate it now even more as we are rethinking our core molecular biology course and its course objectives for a hybrid and new distance education section. The presenters explained Bloom’s taxonomy and then had an activity to determine which objectives from a list are measurable. A second activity that I found really helpful was to differentiate between a learning objective and a learning activity. Several examples the presenters provided such as “describe your present writing experience” or “complete the reading assignment” are learning activities and not measurable objectives of skills you can use later on. A second ACUE video they played was about writing measurable and actionable learning outcomes that are aligned with assessments and course outcomes. The video is fun and has cartoon graphics that are engaging. One thing I noticed is that they use course outcomes instead of course objectives. I think it is amusing how we all seem to go back and forth and both (outcomes and objectives) seem to be used interchangeably. The third activity used the Learning Objectives Easy Generator website. The interactive website firsts prompts users to describe who the learner is before displaying Bloom’s taxonomy levels and verbs. The pages of the website provide a step-by-step system to generate learning objectives that have the three components of effective learning objectives: who, what, how. The fourth activity presenters did was using Bloom’s Taxonomy to identify the level(s) the objectives are written in. The presenters discussed a “sample blueprint assessment worksheet” that seemed similar to a course map with the instructional materials, assessments, and aligned learning objectives. Some items I noticed on their table that I find useful and often not in course maps are the cognitive level (by Bloom’s taxonomy) and weight of the assignments related to that objective.
The presenters also emphasized that powerful learning outcomes should be:
- student-centered,
- measurable & actionable,
- specific,
- developmental/encouraging higher-order thinking skills,
- and aligned.
We often uses learning objectives and course objectives on syllabi and for backward course design. However, I think it is important to frequently revisit the course AND module student learning objectives and evaluate them based on the criteria stated above. In addition, projects and assignments that may extend beyond a module need learning objectives that are also student-centered, appropriate for the course objectives and developmental stage of learners at that point in the course. The sample blueprint, to me, seems like a first step before creating a course map. I thought about how this would have been useful and may still be as we plan for the fall core course.
