Academic Quality & Excellence : Instructional Design

Instructional design entails systematically designing and developing instructional products and experiences, both online and classroom, to enable the efficient, effective, appealing, engaging and inspiring acquisition of knowledge. It includes learner assessment, learning objectives, and alignment of objectives with learning activities and assessments.
 

The AQE Consultation Team offers consultation with faculty on pedagogically sound course design. This may include:

• Blueprinting of courses
• Alignment between learning objectives, activities and assessments
• Activities and assessments suitable for the level of learners and objectives
• Equitable distribution of varied & engaging learning activities across course modules
• Scaffolds and formative assessments to help learners achieve objectives
• Instructor presence, particularly at the course outset, and opportunities for students to communicate
• Clarity of course structure for learners, including course overview, navigation, sequence

Training in Design & Technologies

• Offering frequent faculty-training sessions during the year regarding best practices for UCNLearn (our LMS), its components and various external applications
• One-on-one training via Zoom, per faculty needs and requests - Just ask!

Course Development Assistance

• Assisting with the development, placement & arrangement of components within course shells
• Troubleshooting on the functionality of course components

Objectives & Outcomes: What’s the Difference?

The terms “Learning Objectives” and “Learning Outcomes” are often used interchangeably, but in fact they’re not the same. It’s a temporal difference but also one of planning versus assessing.

Learning objectives are statements of intent (as 'objectives' should be — see sidebar). When you’re sketching out the learning event (e.g., class or course), learning objectives can indicate how it should proceed and what you want to accomplish. Objectives are well suited to a lesson plan or course outline. What will the learners do during the course? (Not what they demonstrate at the end — those are the outcomes.)

A lesson plan — or course outline — lays out the objectives along with the time, activities and resources to be used to pursue those objectives.

Outcomes, on the other hand, are the terminal analogue, indicating the end of the learning event (or milestones during the learning event, such as midterm exams). They express the learners’ measurable achievements or capacities.

In other words, learning outcomes are the new, measurable and observable capacities that the learners should have attained by the end of the course. And the course must include assessments to test or demonstrate those capacities.

A course outline is largely concerned with objectives. But at some point it will list the learning outcomes, too. Each outcome must have a strong verb indicating how the learner will demonstrate (in an assessment) a competency s/he must attain by the end of the course.

For example, a verb such as “learn”, "explore" or “participate” might be congruent with objectives, but they wouldn't suffice for outcomes. “Apply” could work for an outcome because a learner's application of something is observable and measurable.

Further Reading:

• Useful Verbs for Developing Learning Outcomes. Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation, University of Toronto.
• Course Objectives & Learning Outcomes. Teaching Commons, DePaul University.