Summary and reflections
Constructive alignment (CA) is a new approach or “design” of teaching described initially by Biggs. In CA approach the focus is placed on the outcomes that needs to be met by the teaching process and on the students learning rather than the teacher or the teaching material just as such. It is considered as a method that has been evaluated in different assessments and has been pointed to lead to increase in students’ engagements, in positive learning outcome and in a higher degree of stimulation in students learning.
The term “constructive alignment” represents a compilation of two terms – “constructive” and “alignment”. The term “constructive” comes from the constructivism psychology in which the knowledge of each individual about the world is built through interactions with it, rather than through passively obtained knowledge by books or by storytelling lectures. The term “alignment” is added because within the approach there is a need for alignment or coordination of each moment within the teaching process – the predefined outcomes, the teaching material and the final assessment.
Constructive alignment as approach reminds very much of the home education that is provided to toddlers when they are obtaining their initial life skills. Mothers want to learn for examples the kids to be able to eat with a spoon and they train their kids in exactly this and nothing else, at the end the evaluation is whether the children have obtained the skill, i.e. the pre-defined action, i.e. can he/she eat with a spoon.
According to Briggs, in order to apply constructive alignment there is an operational framework that needs to be in place which consists of several steps: 1) initial description of the teaching outcomes, also referred to as intended learning outcomes (ILO) which is done through verbs (one verb per outcome); 2) design of activities for teaching and learning, also referred to as teaching/learning activities (TLA); 3) summary of assessment tasks (AT) that reflect the ILO and also are defined by verbs; 4) Grading. Apart of the framework, constructive alignment also demands a different type of engagement and efforts from the students, the teaching staff, and the departments. CA needs an overall view of the methodology and when applied within a course, all the modules of the course have to follow it, meaning ta provide tasks and assessment criteria in line with the active learning in accordance with CA:
Constructive alignment has been tested in multiple programs, universities and across borders with reported results of improvements, such as greater standardization, greater transparency, more effective evaluation and increase in the criticality and depth of student work. Although showing improvements, there are still some skepticism towards applying widely the CA in all universities which include:
- Lack of finances to educate staff and assure them paid time for applying CA practices. The current lack of financial support from the institutions that intend to apply CA, as financial limitations lead to increased student-to-staff ratio and decreased time devoted to teaching.
- Teachers’ resistance to change. Most of the systems today are teachers-centered, which means that teachers have central role in defining the course materials. CA when applied as an institutional decision can be therefore seen as an imposed approach which takes the initiative from the hands of the teachers.
In my understanding the process of deep and surface learning which characterize the respectively constructive alignment and declarative teaching lead also to development of different type of knowledge and skills. The declarative knowledge mirrors the teacher’s tuition, while the constructive alignment knowledge represents what the student can do with the teacher’s tuition. In that way to obtain declarative knowledge in students, teacher has to repeat many times the same content without changing it and then ask the student to reproduce it which represents a sole action (reproduction). The knowledge is then the declarative knowledge (the reproduced teachers’ knowledge) and the skill obtained is reproduction. In constructive alignment, the student is asked to obtain applied knowledge, which is evaluated throughout different and multiple actions, e.g. solve problems, to construct hypothesis, to describe possible actions in a new situation, etc. The constructive alignment knowledge is then a combination of the students previous knowledge and the one obtained by the teachers tuition and the obtained skill is the set of skills that have been demanded and tested throughout the course.
I followed the papers on constructive alignment with great interest as they mirror my understanding of the current needs of engineering students. According to me, engineering students seek clearly applicable knowledge where they know in each moment what they should do with the information or the skills they obtain. With the difference from other disciplines, where long tutoring talks without audience engagement, long texts to read as teaching material and free text assignments are accepted as an educational environment, engineering students often question practices and demand an educational environment where focus is put on applying the knowledge in concrete examples and learning by doing.
My observations further show that the multiple social networks and the available endless possibilities for activities alternative to education, together with the pandemic have decreased the attention span and the time students devote to taking in knowledge. This means that we, as teachers, have shorter time periods on our disposal to introduce new concepts. This makes constructive alignment even more necessary in engineering education as active learning, which constructive alignment is based on, can in the most efficient way use the decreasing time span available to the teacher to share skills and knowledge. Last but not least, constructive alignment is in line with my understanding that the best shared knowledge happens when active teachers meet active learners in a highly creative environment of endless possibilities for further development.
Constructive alignment for me represents a variation or a better-defined version of the problem-based learning that I use in my teaching approach. When designing a problem-based teaching course, I usually start with the outcomes and define how with my teaching approach I can make students reach these outcomes which I assess through problems that reflect their future tasks as engineers where students need to show their analytical abilities. I have seen throughout my own journey in education that tutoring when made only as a talking from the teachers’ side and no activities or engagement from the students’ side is not efficient and therewith not to be recommended and can lead only to bored students and/or empty lecture halls. I, therefore, as a teacher aim throughout my practice to engage students in different roleplays and open discussions. Depending on the subject I am covering in the particular moment of the course, there are different type of actions that I ask from the students – I ask them to answer questions, to solve problems, to put themselves in different roles, to share own experience, etc.
What will I take along in my practice? As my courses are in the coming periods, the first I will do is that I will use Bansets “successful key” to reevaluate the course goals and see whether they are well-articulated so that students can understand my expectations for their learning. I will check the clarity of this goals with previous students and with people that are not involved in the course so that I can assure clear formulations (e.g. questions such as: Was it clear for you? How do you understand what you should be able to do?). I will also try to be more clear with what I expect to see as changes in the students after they have taken the course which I think will also raise their motivation towards the learning process.
I will continue focusing on learning outcomes as a first step when planning my courses at the same time as I will try to connect each one of the outcomes with a verb as defined by Biggs. I realized after reading the papers that I try to collect several verbs for one goal and that I still use verbs that were adopted from the previous teachers, just because they sounded nice. I will set time so that the verb I choose is clear, simple and with a meaning I can relate to, rather than a verb that reflects what other courses have in their descriptions. I will further do a slight modification in the constructive alignment practice – I will have two verbs – a verb for me (what I should do for the defined goal) and a verb for the students (what I expect the students to do to demonstrate that they meet the goal).
I will also be more consistent when designing evaluation problems to put a verb on the skills I expect and test and revisit whether the problem that I define mirrors the action from the student I want to evaluate. I am thinking of trying even to be more open to the students in showing them the action (the verb) I have put in the evaluation problems when solving examples in class. I will revisit Bansets paper to check the verbs and actions both when designing goals and evaluations.
I will work further to introduce learner engagement by the students. I am curious in fact to test whether one can apply constructive alignment to each lecture – to predefine the outcomes in each lecture and predefine the skills I will test throughout the lecture. This I think can help in making the process more continuous and will increase the motivation towards uninterrupted intuitive learning process. I want also to test to evaluate through the 3P model – to check the presage of the students in the beginning of the lecture, to make an evaluation of the process by activity during the class and the check the product by an evaluation of the obtained knowledge through a final task.
The constructive alignment papers revived in me also the interest towards research in education and more particularly evaluating and quantifying the efficiency of my own combination of teaching practices and see whether I am improving my practices and whether I achieve my set goals and verbs. I consider in fact constructive alignment to be applicable also in research practices and supervision, likewise it is applicable in teaching.
