DT Quin: DESTIN WP3 TOOLKIT - PEDAGOGY and T+L STRATEGIES

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’.