OUTCOMES-BASED TEACHING AND LEARNING outcomes-based教学与学习.docVIP

OUTCOMES-BASED TEACHING AND LEARNING (OBTL) What is it, Why is it, How do we make it work? John Biggs Catherine Tang TO BE READ BEFORE DOING THE PRE-WORKSHOP EXERCISES What is OBTL and how does it differ from “traditional” teaching and assessment? Traditionally, teachers used to plan their teaching by asking such questions as: What topics or content do I teach? What teaching methods do I use? How do I assess to see if the students have taken on board what I have taught them? Teaching here is conceived as a process of transmitting content to the students, so the methods tend to be expository, and assessment focused on checking how well the message has been received—hence the common use of lectures and demonstrations, with tutorials for clarification, and exams that rely on reporting back. OBTL, on the other hand, is based on such questions as: What do I intend my students to be able to do after my teaching that they couldn’t do before, and to what standard? How do I supply learning activities that will help them achieve those outcomes? How do I assess them to see how well they have achieved them? As its name suggests, OBTL starts with clearly stating, not what the teacher is going to teach, but what the outcome of that teaching is intended to be in the form of a statement of what the learner is supposed to be able to do and at what standard: the Intended Learning Outcome (ILO). When students attend lectures, however, their main activity is receiving, not doing. Hence we need to devise Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs) that require students to apply, invent, generate new ideas, diagnose and solve problems—or whatever other things they are expected to be able to do after they graduate. Similarly we need Assessment Tasks (ATs) that tell us, not to how well students have received knowledge, but how they can use it in academically and professionally appropriate ways, such as solving problems, designing experiments, or communicating with clients. It is of