Curriculum Design I & II |
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Curriculum & OutcomesEducation is so broad that it often cannot be pinpointed, which often results in throwing learners into a constricting environment that uses training-type instruction."
In addition, technology is being deployed in K-12 classrooms with increasing frequency. And, school curricula are being redesigned, updated, thrown out, added, and everything else you can think of, so teachers are required to not only figure out how to adapt their lessons to new curriculum, they must also adapt new technology to new curriculum, or adapt their old technology that they still have to new curriculum. Any of these adaptations require teachers to do some curriculum design (or curriculum re-design, at least). Even if the curriculum remains unchanged, new technology will require teachers to try to “design in” the use of the technology to their lessons. Regardless of teachers’ interest in designing curriculum or designing curriculum to incorporate the use of technology, they are very likely to be confronted with the need to do so in the near future. |
CurriculumWhat we want our students to know and be able to do. We use the term scope to indicate what knowledge and skills are included in the curriculum in question. We use the word sequence to indicate in what order the component parts of the curriculum should be presented.
InstructionWhat happens when curriculum is delivered. Teachers take curriculum and fashion lessons to deliver the curricular knowledge or skills to students. Curriculum may be written at a level of detail that describes precisely what readings, activities and assessments are intended for use. Or curriculum may be written at a less detailed level, where it is assumed teachers will work out the details of how to convey the curriculum to students. When teachers are using a detailed curriculum, it is common for teachers to pick and choose what activities and assessments they use with students.
Outcomes DefinitionOutcomes are statements that describe what students will be able to know (cognitive), do (psychomotor), and feel/model (affective) by the end of the program or course of study. Outcomes describe measurable behaviours. Most outcomes have three parts: an action, a topic, and a criterion or context.
Note that terminology is used interchangeably; you may find "outcomes," "objectives," and "goals" used to mean the same thing in different settings. The semantics are less critical than the essential notion: statements describing what students will have learned, articulated in a way that allows that learning to be measured.
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Language of OutcomesTo be meaningful, a Learning Outcome needs to be built around a verb that is sufficiently precise that it can result in a measurable deliverable, such as to following from an introductry Chemistry course in Chemistry:
- Students will be able to appreciate the complexity of Shakespeare’s plays. The problem with “appreciate” is that it’s too intangible. How does one measure a student’s “appreciation”? |
Verbs that are commonly found in well-articulated Learning Outcomes include the following:
- name, identify, recognize, describe, compare, contrast, demonstrate, distinguish, interpret, classify, analyze, deduce, infer, extrapolate, devise, critique, and plan. Incidentally, these verbs (as well as many others) have been classified within a system known as Bloom’s Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain, based upon whether a given verb tends to be associated with lower levels of thinking (such as mere memorization) or higher levels of thinking (such as evaluation or synthesis). - Examples of learning outcomes for each level of Bloom's Taxonomy, in a variety of different disciplines, can be found here. |