Alignment

Connecting the dots

Overview

What?

Everything should contribute to broader goals. Assessment should assess a goal, instruction should impart goal oriented thinking, instruction should utilize goal oriented tasks (in-class 09/20). Use https://egia.slab.com/posts/backward-design-04d22850 to keep all the elements of instructional design oriented towards service of the course goals.

(Drawn by Jiasi, based on knowledge learned from Ken's E-learning class)

Backward Design is a method of designing educational curriculum by setting goals before choosing instructional methods & forms of assessment.

• Everything connects in the framework. (in-class 09/20)

• The assessment should be aligned with the goals during the process. Aligned assessments reflect students' learning and the teacher's teaching. (in-class 09/04, scroll to see how each phase should align with each other)

Why?

Direct correspondence between goals, instruction and assessment provides a system for determining what children have learned, whether they've learned and how they will learn it.

How to use to support learning

Iterate between goals, assessment and instruction until all are aligned, may require multiple iterations.

Pitfalls to avoid

Do not focus on an assessment or instruction for its own sake, it must align with goals and other phases of course design.

Implications

Learner Context

• The alignment should be based on the context of learners, to make sure that the alignment makes sense to learner. See https://egia.slab.com/posts/authenticity-1959e7ba and https://egia.slab.com/posts/adaptive-goals-35512fba.

Goals

• Goals should be aligned with relevant standards. See https://egia.slab.com/posts/goals-setting-by-standards-7a3071ab#overview .
• Assessment should assess a goal, instruction should impart goal oriented thinking, instruction should utilize goal oriented tasks.
• Use https://egia.slab.com/posts/cognitive-task-analysis-db9f91aa to determine what knowledge and skills will be useful to students (see https://egia.slab.com/posts/authenticity-1959e7ba)
• Use pre-existing rubrics or standards as a basis for alignment.

Assessment

• Assessment should be designed based on learning goals. Formative assessment should be aligned with the instruction.
  • Assessments should justify inference of student ability (see https://egia.slab.com/posts/validity-ee4a3d9d)
  • Assessments should be consistent and as objective as possible, so different assessors would score the same work equally (see https://egia.slab.com/posts/reliability-269a7686)
  • Every goal should be thoroughly assessed (see https://egia.slab.com/posts/sufficiency-c3653180)
• Adapt rubrics to better align with desired performance.

Instruction

• Instruction should serve the goals. Avoid including seductive elements and details that do not contribute to the course goals.
  • Use https://egia.slab.com/posts/cognitive-task-analysis-db9f91aa to determine what knowledge and skill is required for students to achieve the goals.
• Avoid including learning activities that are interesting but only tangentially related to the goals.
• Use https://egia.slab.com/posts/taxonomy-b5f2bb9c to relate instructional techniques to the specific way that the goals prescribe students engage with course material. See the https://egia.slab.com/posts/six-facets-of-understanding-eaaa422d for a more complete description of goal types.
  • If students must learn to apply a principle, make sure they practice application
  • If students should be able to analyze, they should practice analysis

Research and Evaluation

• Use implementation research to check how well aligned the course was after each iteration.
  • How well did good performance during instructional activities correlate to good performance during summative assessment?
  • Were students able to perform desired https://egia.slab.com/posts/transfer-6db9e6a0 tasks?
  • How thoroughly documented is each student's achievement for every goal?
    • Should there be more assessment items for any particular goals? (see https://egia.slab.com/posts/triangulation-ff3edec0)

Examples

• Sharon’s Child Development course syllabus - all goals are explicitly stated and instruction & assessment map clearly to one or multiple goals.
• Children’s School posters
  • Posters with the 6 children’s school goals and how a given activity or area contributes to each of those 6 goals (science, dramatic play, cooking shown below)

• There are priorities among the different goals(in-class 09/20).
  • E.g. The goals of Carnegie Mellon University Children’s School. With its first purpose to set up, its primary goal is to provide a place for children development and education study of CMU.
  • E.g. For the kids in children school, the goal to learn how to learn different types of knowledge is prior to learn to remember some specific knowledge.

Alignment between EGIA Design Phases: