View All Pages

Learning Objectives and Alignment

At the heart of Quality Matters, and perhaps the most important pedagogical aspect of any course, is alignment.

What Alignment Is

Alignment refers to the way in which each of the elements of your course work together to support the intended learning outcomes. When you have the alignment of your course elements figured out, you will naturally have a framework for your course.

You can think of alignment as a kind of chain in which the materials, activities, and assessments in your course support the learning objectives of each module, and each module in turn supports the course-level objectives. The manner in which each part of your course supports the next is through alignment.

Course-level learning objectives

Course-level objectives:

  • May be defined by the school or program in which your course is located
  • Describe what students will be able to do (and will have done) when they finish the course
  • Will naturally be broad and achievable only in the longer term (the duration of the course)

Module-level learning objectives

Module-level objectives:

  • Will usually be defined by you
  • Describe what students will be able to do (and will have done) within a module
  • Will be specific to the module and achievable in the short term (the duration of a module)

Why Alignment Matters

This isn't just a conceptual concern; alignment must be explicitly addressed in the way you build your course. For each module in your course you will need to define learning objectives, to which everything in that module is expected to contribute: every reading, every activity, every project, and every assessment.

Since QM provides the framework for review of online and hybrid courses at UWT, it is practically necessary. More importantly, alignment in your course is important to both you and your students for a variety of reasons:

  • For you, alignment provides a method for determining what is important and appropriate in your course, and assures that everything your students do is connected to the course's learning outcomes. Alignment allows you to remove things that might be traditional or inherited but don't clearly connect to the intended outcomes, and to add materials, activities, and assessments that do. Finally, alignment exposes clearly what to assess (and when).
  • For your students, alignment assures them that their effort is maximized in service of learning and that the purpose of their work is clear.

Key QM Standards

If you look at the Quality Matters Rubric, you will see that alignment is fundamental to many of the critical standards. In particular:

  • 2.1 Course objectives are measurable
  • 2.2 Module objectives are measurable
  • 3.1 Assessments measure objectives?
  • 4.1 Materials contribute to the objectives.
  • 5.1 Activities promote achievement of objectives.
  • 6.1 Tools used support the objectives.

An Example

The following list demonstrates alignment between Course Level Objectives and Module Level Objectives. In this case, all three Module objectives support the single Course Level objective. All other items are tagged to show which Module Objective they support. This is one way of creating the map of learning objectives, activities, materials, and assessments required for a course review:

  • [C1] Course Level Objective: Create and bake French, Italian and Soft sandwich breads.
    • [M1] Module Objective: Calculate hydration levels
    • [M2] Module Objective: Create and pre-ferment a "sponge"
    • [M3] Module Objective: Bake a free-form French loaf
      • Materials: Hydration calculation and calculator (site) [M1]
      • Materials: Video on yeast types [M2]
      • Materials: Video on different types of unsweet yeast breads [M3]
        • Activity: Hydration calculation practice using given values [M1]
          • Assessment: Hydration calculation quiz (auto-graded) [M1]
        • Activity: Create and bake Loaf [M2]
          • Activity: Select and share recipe, including reasons for choosing it [M3]
          • Assessment: Submit baking journal [M1, M2, M3]
          • Activity: graded discussion sharing pictures of product and notes about challenges and ongoing questions [M1, M2, M3]

More Alignment Mapping Examples

There are many ways to create a map of your course objectives, assessments, materials, and activities. For example:

  • Outline: Word, PDF
  • Graphic: Mind Map 
  • Spreadsheet: View, Alternate Layout