Date of Award

Fall 10-17-2014

Document Type

Graduate Project

Degree Name

Master of Science in Education (MSEd)

Department

Educational Foundations & Research

Abstract

Executive Summary Title: Creating Learning Outcomes and Choosing Corresponding Assessment Description The design project is for self-paced online instruction for instructional staff of the School of Continuing Education of Red River College. The training material will instruct the learners in the creation of correctly-constructed learning outcomes and the choice of appropriate assessment methods for the outcomes created. Target Learners The learners will be adult learners who are instructional staff of the School of Continuing Education of Red River College. The learners will range in age from 18 — 75 years and have a varied formal educational background that will range from bachelor degree to doctoral degree. Goal of Project In this training, the instructional staff of the School of Continuing Education of Red River College will generate correctly-constructed learning outcomes tor courses and choose a method of assessment that will accurately measure the outcomes created. Rationale The School of Continuing Education (CE) is instituting a requirement for all contracted instructors that will begin with the winter term of 2015 to have the learning outcomes for the course explained to the students and a discussion of the corresponding assessment methods that are being employed in the course. 1 Dawn Jo-Anne Spencer, Fall 2014 f n f R f n H h f f f Currently the instructors who are contracted to develop courses and/or teach courses for CE are chosen for their expertise in the subject area. The CE staff have communicated that in their experience 65- 75 percent of these contracted instructors have no formal training in education and thus they are neither familiar with the purpose of creation of learning outcomes nor in choosing an appropriate assessment method when developing and/or teaching the courses. The contracted instructor’s exposure to learning outcomes and assessment tends to be from their own educational experience. Although the contracted instructors will be required to communicate an explanation of the learning outcomes and assessment methods to students, there is limited support available for the instructors to learn about these. Training for instructors about learning outcomes and assessment methods are available as embedded portions of courses delivered through the Certificate in Adult Education Program at Red River College. The contracted instructors for CE can take these courses, but they are not required to. The courses are delivered over ten weeks face-to-face or online. The timeframes for delivery often do not allow for completion before the contracted instructor is to begin development of the learning outcomes and choosing the assessment method for their course as they are not contracted by CE until approximately 2- 4 weeks before they are to begin. Early in 2014, a newly-hired program director for one of the areas of CE was reviewing course outlines in order to become familiar with the course material offered. She found issues related to the learning outcomes that she was reading. She estimated that about 50-60 % of those she examined had outcomes that were not directly measurable and/or were written not as learning outcomes but as tasks. Through further discussion with the program mangers of CE, I was told that they estimated in 40 - 50% of the course outlines they review there are learning outcomes that are not directly measurable using verbs such as ‘know’ and ‘understand’. This online self-paced training will provide just-in-time training and assessment on the basic elements of the creation of learning outcomes and the choice of appropriate assessment method/s for the learning outcomes. The training can be available for current CE instructors to self-select in order to brush Dawn Jo-Anne Spencer, Fall 2014 2 up on these topics in advance of the implementation of the CE requirement to explain and discuss their learning outcomes and assessment methods.

Download

Share

COinS