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Understanding Constructive Alignment in Education

Constructive alignment refers to aligning three key elements in a course: 1) the learning outcomes, 2) learning activities, and 3) assessments. Learning outcomes should be clearly articulated upfront. Learning activities should develop the outcomes, with low-level activities for low-level outcomes and high-level activities for high-level outcomes. Assessments should measure the outcomes and skills practiced in activities, with no surprises. Misalignment could involve vague outcomes, activities developing different skills than assessed, or assessments requiring unexpected high-level skills.

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Libed, April Joelyn
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292 views5 pages

Understanding Constructive Alignment in Education

Constructive alignment refers to aligning three key elements in a course: 1) the learning outcomes, 2) learning activities, and 3) assessments. Learning outcomes should be clearly articulated upfront. Learning activities should develop the outcomes, with low-level activities for low-level outcomes and high-level activities for high-level outcomes. Assessments should measure the outcomes and skills practiced in activities, with no surprises. Misalignment could involve vague outcomes, activities developing different skills than assessed, or assessments requiring unexpected high-level skills.

Uploaded by

Libed, April Joelyn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Constructive alignment

Constructive alignment refers to alignment between three


major elements of every course:

•The learning outcomes (i.e., learning goals or learning


objectives) we hope students to achieve;

•The learning activities (e.g. lectures, readings, projects,


assignments, etc.) we use to help students to develop in those
goals; and

•The assessments we use to see whether or not students


reached the goals.
This is all shaped by the specific contextual factors for the course, the learners,
and the teacher (in this case, online learning is a significant factor).
To be constructively aligned, ensure you do the following:

***Clearly articulate learning outcomes


•Do this for your course and for course activities
•These should be shared with students, such as in the syllabus, at the start
of lectures, and in any project or assignment.

***Align your course learning activities to develop the learning outcomes


•For example, do not assign readings (a low-level activity) and hope that
from those readings alone that students will develop competency in analysis
or evaluation (higher-level activities)
•Low-level activities (like reading, listening to a lectures, or watching a
video) are generally only good for developing low-level outcomes (like
remembering and understanding); high-level activities (like making an
argument or recommendation and defending it, or devising a solution to a
complex problem) draw from multiple levels
***Assess students at a level that is consistent with the learning
outcomes provided AND the learning activities used
•Assessments should measure student development and
competency in the learning outcomes you have identified, and to
the same level you have indicated in those learning outcomes.

•The types of tasks you ask students to perform in the


assessments should have been practiced and modeled in the
learning activities for your course.  This does not mean simply
repeating the same examples or practice problems from class on
an assessment; it means there should be no surprises in terms
of what is expected of students on assessments and exams. 
Remember, assessments are already stressful enough!
•As an example of misalignment, imagine yourself as a learner in a course on soil
mechanics.
• Imagine you are provided a couple vague learning outcomes, such as “Through
this course you will understand soil mechanics,” in the syllabus, and they are never
mentioned again in the course.

• Now imagine the course learning activities consist of lectures where the instructor
describes and demonstrates solving typical calculation problems related to soil
mechanics, and the homework involves you solving similar problems on your own.

• Finally, imagine your final exam asks you to devise a new calculation approach for
a problem type you have never seen before, and to use that to design an earth dam
in a fictitious scenario.

• Most likely, you (and other students) in this example would be surprised and upset
by this unexpected twist on the exam (and rightly so).  Through the course you
developed your ability to apply concepts to solve calculation-type problems, and
there appears to have been no suggestion that a higher-level of competency was
expected in the course or would be tested on the final exam.  What’s more, there
were no learning activities in the course to help you develop this competency.

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