Academy for International Science and Research
UK AND INTERNATIONALLY ACCREDITED PRIVATE ACADEMY AND RESEARCH INSTITUTE SPECIALISING IN TEACHER AND COACH TRAINING, MENTAL HEALTH, BUSINESS AND STEMM
Welcome to AISR's Curriculum Development and Teacher Training Toolkit. Below are the curriculum design principles, which will enable the development of a fit for purpose, reliable and valid curriculum.
Learning Aims, Objectives, Outcomes: These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, as will be described they actually have quite specific and distinct meanings in relation to curriculum design.
Learning aims are succinct descriptions of the overall goals that would be included in any programme of learning, for example a lesson, course, a module, an individual lecture, seminar, conference etc .
When defining learning aims, it can be helpful to ask questions such as:
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From the lecturer's or teacher's perspective, what is this module or lesson for?
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What are the main advantages of benefits for the learners?
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What is the course or module trying to achieve?
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The particular learning aims of your course or module will be specific to the vocational context of your subject area.
Below we listed some well-defined learning aims from AISR module descriptors:
The aim of this module is to provide learners with a comprehensive coverage of the principles of inorganic chemistry, which includes particle - wave duality of electrons, electronegativity, orbitals, group 1 and 2 reactions, reactions of the halogens, hydrogen bonding, covalent and ionic bonding, and permanent and induced dipoles, so that they are able to solve chemistry problems and build a body of knowledge, which will further enhance their chemical career. (Faculty of Paramedical Sciences)
The aim of the Interpersonal Skills module will provide a general overview of research methods in healthcare and reinforce understanding of the importance of research, communication, maintaining accurate clinical records, and clinical research for the maintaining of knowledge and skills of clinical practice. (Faculty of Paramedical Sciences)
Now develop the learning aims of your own programme, module or lesson. How would you design the key aims and values in the form of the examples above? Try to compose your learning aims and ask a colleague to evaluate them.
Learning Objectives
Defining the learning objectives of a course, programme, module or lesson is another important aspect of curriculum design.
The learning objectives are brief descriptions of how the learning aims are going to be fulfilled. They include more details of the planning required for the effective teaching and learning than the learning aims, thus they are written from the perspective of the teacher or lecturer.
Learning objectives are not a replacement for the learner-focused intended learning outcomes. They are required for designing and planning learning, and for informing learners about the content of the course or lesson.
The following questions are useful for the development of learning objectives:
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What teaching methods will be used?
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What are students going to be doing?
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What kinds of learning activities will they engage in?
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What new knowledge, skills or understanding do you intend learners to gain, and at what level?
Here are some examples of learning objectives from an Online Entrepreneurship module in the Faculty of Business:
The objectives of this module are:
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To develop a level of competence, skills and knowledge within online entrepreneurship as befits those hoping to launch their online business post COVID-19.
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To develop a critical understanding of the various prescriptive innovation process models
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To present an audit of a new venture or innovation.
Please note, that these learning objectives are the components of the curriculum design that the teacher must address whilst developing the programme. These objectives need to be mapped with the learning outcomes to ensure a coherent programme.
Please revisit the learning aims you developed in the previous section and record how might those aims be expressed in terms of a more detailed series of learning objectives?
Learning Outcomes
In the previous two sections we clarified some key curriculum design terminology, learning aims as succinct descriptions of the overall goals of a programme or module, and learning objectives as brief descriptions of how the learning aims are going to be fulfilled.
In contrast to learning aims and objectives, learning outcomes (LOs) focus on what students will be doing.
LOs are succinct descriptions of how learners will demonstrate that they have achieved the intended learning at the end of a programme or module. They describe what learners will be expected to be able to do if they have been successful, and they indicate the achievement of a learner commensurate with the appropriate level.
LOs describe the demonstrations of knowledge, skills and understanding, which are observable, measurable and assessable. They are derived from the high-level learning aims we discussed earlier, and they are closely aligned with both the learning activities and with the methods of assessment.
Below you can find an example of a set of well-written LOs, which are from an Online Entrepreneurship module at AISR.
Upon successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
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Select the appropriate business model for their chosen product and/or service and register their business in their chosen country.
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Construct a Profit and Loss account.
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Perform basic accounting practices.
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Scale their own business and implement business systems.
When the above learning outcomes are compared with the learning objectives discussed in the previous section, we can identify at least three differences between the LOs and the learning objectives.
LOs are part of the three domains of learning, knowledge, skills and attitude and they also ensure inclusive learning.
There are three key processes at the heart of curriculum design:
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establishing appropriate learning outcomes;
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designing appropriate learning and teaching activities that enable learners to meet those outcomes;
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designing appropriate assessment methods through which learners can demonstrate that they have met the outcomes.
When the above three key processes are aligned to each other, a constructive alignment is achieved. This alignment amongst learning and teaching activities, learning outcomes and assessment methods is illustrated in the diagram below.
Constructive alignment is a principle used for devising teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks, that directly address the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) in a way not typically achieved in traditional lectures, tutorial classes and examinations. This approach is very useful to comply with QAA regulations which tend to take a Learning Outcomes approach to ensuring consistency and quality.
Teachers need to align their lessons or courses with theses outcomes in order to facilitate a greater learning experience for their students. Additionally, learners will have a clearer understanding of the assessment methods and how the learning activities are relevant to them.
Principles of Designing ILOs
As a general principle, a well-written ILO will have the following features:
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It will be written in the future tense;
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It will contain a behavioural action verb to guide students as to what specifically they will expected to do;
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It will be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-appropriate).
Learning outcomes are often written as a list starting with a general statement such as ‘At the end of this lecture/workshop/course students should be able to …’ which is followed by brief, clear statements about what the student should gain from the teaching.
There are a number of formats for writing clear outcomes, one popular approach is the ABC method:
A stands for Antecedent - the learning activity
B stands for Behaviour - the skill, knowledge or attitude being demonstrated
C stands for Criterion - the degree of acceptable performance
In practice, the criterion is rarely stated explicitly in higher education outcomes since grading standards are set for the entire course and posted separately on the syllabus. However, the ‘C’ can link to the assessment you will use to measure learning.
Guidance on Writing ILOs
The antecedent (A) introduces a list of learning outcomes that arise from the learning activity:
At the end of this lesson, learners will be able to apply their knowledge of anatomy and basic functions to identify abnormalities in clinical scenarios.
The opening general statement ‘At the end of this lesson learners will be able to ...’ indicates the timing. For example, what might be expected at the end of a single lesson would be different from what could be achieved in a course.
In this case the actual knowledge is about ‘anatomy and basic functions’. The last clause ‘to identify abnormalities in clinical scenarios’ indicates how the knowledge will be applied and gives a clue to the potential assessment context.
Importantly, the action verb ‘Apply’ indicates the type and level of learning that is expected of the learner, and expresses the way learners will need to demonstrate that they have achieved it.
The choice of action verb is a critical element of an effective ILO, which will be covered in the next section.
In the next section, we explore how to decide the appropriate level of challenge when we are designing for learning, and how can we embed this within the LOs, so that students are completely aware of what is expected from them. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a helpful guide to classifying and describing levels of learning.
Bloom's Taxonomy
Before we look at how to develop LOs we will examine key aspects of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for their students (learning objectives).
The taxonomy was originally proposed in 1956 to classify the thinking behaviours that were believed to be important in the processes of learning. Ultimately, this developed into three domains:
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The cognitive domain - knowledge based domain, consisting of six levels
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The affective domain - attitudinal based domain, consisting of five levels, and
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The psychomotor domain - skills based domain, consisting of six levels.
The taxonomy was revised in 2001 to reflect more recent understanding of educational processes, and it is still widely used today.
The taxonomy for the cognitive domain is often represented in the form of a pyramid, as shown below.
Copyright - AISR
The table below shows the definitions for each level in the revised taxonomy.
Title | Description |
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Remembering | Retrieving, recognising, and recalling relevant knowledge from long‐term memory. |
Understanding | Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarising, inferring, comparing, and explaining. |
Applying | Carrying out or using a procedure for executing, or implementing. |
Analysing | Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organising, and attributing. |
Evaluating | Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing. |
Creating | Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganising elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing. |
Choosing Action Verbs
The first step of writing learning outcomes is to decide which action verbs you want the learner to demonstrate. It should be something observable (i.e. identify, evaluate or analyse) rather than trying to decipher an invisible activity within the mind of a learner (i.e. know, understand or appreciate). This is not to belittle 'invisible activity’, but observable actions make the learning activity more concrete, easier to demonstrate and easier to assess.
Some action verbs express straightforward behaviour such as describe, while others can be more complex, for example, compare. First, the learner needs to be able to describe two pieces of information in order compare and contrast. Therefore, comparing is more complex than describing.
When writing a series of ILOs, consider the order they will be arranged. They should build in complexity, both in terms of the knowledge content and what the learners are expected to be able to do/demonstrate as their learning.
Learning often starts with the more basic elements that learners build on as they move towards more complex learning and understanding. This progression is often present at all levels, from an individual lesson to a whole course, and the sequence of ILOs should reflect this progression.
The action verbs help us to link the knowledge (what is learned) to the level of learning. The table below shows how action verbs might relate to Bloom’s levels of learning.
When you write the ILOs first, perhaps change the action verb or adjust the wording so they are ‘SMART’, they relate to exactly what you want them to do, and they are clear. Then check the following:
• Do they identify the purpose of the module/lesson/course etc.?
• Do they build appropriately?
• Is the level right in terms of where they ‘start’ and ‘finish’?
• Are they achievable by the learner in the time and with the resources available?
This process provides you a way of conceptualising the teaching before you start writing the detail and can save a lot of time and effort and help you focus on exactly what is needed. They also guide learners as to what is important and are useful to other staff/teachers.
If you are asked to teach on a new course and you need to know how to deliver your lessons, or what you can expect the students to know, familiarise yourself with the level and ILOs of the course.
The following tables show a wide range of action verbs to create discussion questions and lesson plans that ensure your students' thinking progresses to higher levels.:
The following tables show sample questions for some of the action verbs:
Bloom’s Verbs And Matching Assessment Types
Intended Learning Aims