WP3
European Curriculum Design TOOLKIT
Pedagogy and
T+L Strategies
Pedagogy – T+L
Strategies - TWO: A Basic Model of an ALIGNED Curriculum
How Curriculum Learning Outcomes, Teaching and Learning
Activities and Assessment link together to allow our students to successfully
learn what we intend them to learn.
In our European Curriculum
Development model, The Programme Team (ordinary Professors, lecturers,
teachers) are usually responsible for Programme Design and Curriculum
Development. They will often be assisted by their Heads of Department and
Managers. They will sometimes be advised and guided in their Teaching and
Learning development by experts from other Programmes or Departments within
their Institution or University. European Universities generally do not
maintain ‘Methodological Departments’, but will often have ‘Teaching and
Learning’ Units, often drawn from teaching staff across the university.
The Intended Learning Outcomes of the Curriculum are formulated first.
On successful completion of our module or our programme ‘WHAT will our students
be able to do’?
Once our Learning Outcomes are
devised, we can either specify the Assessment
Regime OR the Teaching and Learning
Activities.
In our case, let’s start with
the Teaching and Learning Activities. These are what the teacher DOES and what
the students DO in order to achieve the learning required by some or all of our
learning outcomes. Our Teaching and Learning activities must do several things.
They must get essential information, concepts and experiences across to our
students (things they NEED to know). The teaching and learning activities must
hold the attention of our students (ideally our teaching should surprise,
inspire and excite our students). Thirdly, our teaching and learning activities
MUST provide our students with at least enough information, concepts and
experience to PASS the assessment we set (in other words to achieve our Minimum
Intended Learning Outcomes). Ideally, our students should get enough
information, concepts, experience and inspiration to EXCEL in any assessment we
set them.
The Assessment Regime creates CRITERIA FOR ASSESSMENT which relate to
our Intended Learning Outcomes. Our assessment criteria should check if our
students have successfully achieved our Minimum Intended Learning Outcomes. Our
assessment criteria should also allow us to know if our students have EXCELLED
in their studies. Some assessment can be pass/fail. However, most assessment is
organised into clear levels of attainment – Excellent, Satisfactory, Pass,
Fail. These levels of attainment can be expressed as a mark or grade.
Students also benefit from
Feedback from our assessment of their work. Constructive feedback allows
students to see what was STRONG in their work, what could be IMPROVE or DEVELOP
in the future and might even give them some RECOMMENDATIONS (a kind of action
plan) which will allow them to improve their learning and their grades.
We will deal with assessment and
feedback in more detail in ‘Assessment
and Feedback’.
An excellent short (2 page, with an Appendix) document from UCD Ireland - using Biggs' Model of Constructive
Alignment
Tempus ALIGN Guidelines - page 25 - 7 steps of an ALIGNMENT process - 14 pages
www.davidquin.ie/ALIGN Guidelines - page 25 - 7 steps of an ALIGNMENT process - 14 pages.pdf
NEXT: DESTIN TOOLKIT PEDAGOGIES THREE: https://quindpdp.blogspot.com/2019/05/destin-wp3-toolkit-pedagogy-and-tl_17.html
