Are outcomes, objectives and assessments aligned in your syllabus?

A quick way to check to see if you have things educationally aligned in your syllabus is to check for what I call outcome/objective/assessment alignment. As we all know, our syllabi must contain course learning outcomes, instructional objectives, and the inclusion of student assessment methods. The purpose of assessment is to measures student achievement. Assessment methods refer to items such as examinations (written, oral, or practical), projects, assignments, OSCE’s or anything else you use to determine whether students learned. Outcomes, objectives, and assessment are critical to ensuring our course “taught” what we want it to and that students achieve the outcomes ( or learned) what we say they would by the end of the course.

A common question among teachers and assessment specialists is, “how do we know if the students learned?” And we can go even a step further and ask, “how do we know if they learned what we asked and needed them to learn (outcomes/objectives)?”

It is beyond the scope of this article to go into detail about course learning outcomes, instructional objectives, and assessment methods.  However, assuming your syllabus contains these three components, here is a simple three-step process to check whether you have alignment or a mismatch.

Step 1: Read and review all of your instructional objectives and highlight the verb used in each one. Since objectives are written in measurable terms, each one must include a measurable verb. A commonly used resource to help educators use measurable verbs is Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification system that guides verb choice and selection based on learning domains.  Initially developed by Benjamin Bloom in 1956, the taxonomy was revised in 2001; however, both are still used.  A simple Google search will bring up an array of measurable verbs.

If you notice some of all of your objectives do not have a measurable verb, then your starting point would be to write ones that do.

Step 2: Look at the methods of assessment used in the course. Methods of assessment include items like multiple-choice, short answer, fill in the blank and essay type questions exams or quizzes, written papers or assignments, oral presentations, and performance assessments such as OSCE’s or practicals.  

Let’s use an example to illustrate: 

For a clinical medicine type course, your methods of assessment are all multiple-choice, single best answer exams. In reviewing the verbs you have listed in your objectives, you find some that contain the verbs “describe,” “explain,” and “list.”  Here is the problem. On a multiple-choice exam, students are not able to describe or explain or list. Since these objectives cannot be assessed or measured by a multiple-choice question, you have an objective-assessment mismatch. Such a mismatch means you are not evaluating the student consistent with the way you asked them to know the material as defined by the objective.  Remember, our instructional objectives are the stepping stones that guide the students in achieving the course learning outcomes. So alignment between our measuring verbs and assessment is critical. Verbs that can be used for multiple-choice exams include: recognize, identify, select, discern, determine, interpret, choose, etc.  If you want to use verbs such as explain or describe, which are perfectly proper, then what type of assessment would best evaluate whether the students can do this?  If you said anything that requires the student write, type, or verbally express it, you are correct. Such tools could be fill in the blank, short essay, oral exams, written assignments, papers, etc. These types of assessments are also useful for assessing students’ ability to compare and contrast, defend or justify, and summarize.

Step 3: Once the instructional objective verbs match your assessment method, now turn your attention to the course learning outcomes. The same principle applies. Like objectives, learning outcomes must be measurable and written to include a quantifiable verb. Highlight the verbs used in each outcome. Using the previous example for a clinical medicine type course, determine whether the verbs used in the outcomes are consistent with those in your objectives and also aligned with your assessment methods. If there are verbs in your outcomes such as describe, demonstrate, present, explain, etc., then there is an outcome- assessment mismatch. Sometimes it is helpful to read an outcome or objective and ask yourself, “Can this be assessed by a multiple-choice question?” If the answer is no, you need to make an adjustment. Remember, your assessment tool should most closely match the action you want the student to be able to do to confirm they have learned.

A common mistake when writing outcomes or objectives is to use the term “know,” “learn,” or “understand.” For example, students will know the causes of pneumonia, or students will be able to understand the diagnostic studies for pneumonia.  Words such as these are too vague and are not measurable verbs from an assessment perspective. If we want to know if a student “understands” the diagnostic studies for pneumonia, a correctly written measurable objective could be, students will select  (or choose, or determine) the best diagnostics study for each type of pneumonia.

The importance of using measurable action verbs in our outcomes and objectives is because it helps to guides us to select the best assessment method to evaluate whether the student has achieved that outcome or objective, or in other words, whether they have learned.  Perhaps another way to think about it is that instructional targets (what you determine will be taught), learning targets (what students must learn as defined by outcomes and objectives), and assessment target (methods and tools you use to evaluate whether they learned) must be aligned.

Using this simple technique can help you determine whether there is alignment within a course syllabus between outcomes, objectives, and assessment.

References:

Mager, R. F. (1997). Preparing instructional objectives: A critical tool in the development of effective instruction (3^rd ed.). Atlanta, GA: The Center for Effective Performance, Inc.

Waugh, C. K., & Gronlund, N. E. (2013). Assessment of student achievement (10^th ed.). Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay