How do I achieve constructive alignment in my courses?

How can I get my students to learn what I want them to learn? What types of assessment should I use? What learning activities will be most effective? A useful framework for thinking about these questions is Constructive Alignment. Constructive Alignment is about ensuring coherence among the course’s intended learning outcomes (ILOs), assessments, and teaching and learning activities. Alignment is achieved when the learning activities that you ask students to engage in help them develop the knowledge, skills, and understandings intended for the course and measured by the assessment.

The framework builds on an idea articulated by Thomas Schuell, “what the student does is actually more important in determining what is learned than what the teacher does.” This idea connects with an important aspect of learning that students construct meaning through relevant learning activities. This meaning is not something imparted or transmitted from teacher to learner, but is something learners will have to create for themselves.

At the core of this framework are the intended learning outcomes. ILOs can be effectively used as the organising paradigm for many aspects of university teaching. They are essentially expressions of what you believe students should be able to achieve by the end of your course. They are visible to your students and help them identify what is significant in your courses. Beyond formulating these ILOs, it is your responsibility as a university educator to develop appropriate assessments that will allow students to demonstrate that they have indeed learnt these learning outcomes, and to plan learning activities that support students in constructing the learning required to meet these learning outcomes. The more these learning activities are aligned with your learning outcomes, the greater the chance of success for students in demonstrating in your assessments that they have achieved these learning outcomes. So long as, of course, the assessments are themselves aligned with the learning outcomes.

Achieving this alignment provides a powerful structure in which to think about university teaching. It can also be used as the basis for how you go about designing your course. In this process, the questions you have to address include:

• What is it that I want my students to understand and know and be able to do?
• How will I know if they have learned what I want them to know?
• What do I need to do in the classroom to prepare them for assessments?