The LOTA project 

The Learning Outcomes and their Assessment (LOTA) project was set up in 1999 to raise awareness about learning outcomes across the Open University, and to shift thinking toward an outcomes-based approach. This was institutional change on a scale not seen since the OU was established in the late 1960s. The main challenges facing the project in the initial stages were:

• Introducing new documentation for quality assurance (QA) purposes to demonstrate that all courses and awards had agreed sets of outcomes.

• Introducing a new language of learning outcomes-previously OU courses had been associated with learning objectives but these had not usually been linked closely with assessment.

• Initiating a culture change - for both academic and administrative staff this meant new ways of talking and thinking about the curriculum and the enhancement of learning.

The focus of LOTA was initially on quality assurance to meet the requirements of the QAA. All UK universities are audited by the QAA to check that the institution has adequate processes and procedures in place to assure the quality of its teaching provision.

The link between teaching and assessment and the need to align them in a way 'that will engage students in the activities most likely to lead to quality learning' (Biggs, 1999) has been well-established. But a first step was to try to clarify what that link meant in practice in the context of OU teaching. Informed by QAA guidelines course teams were asked to define the learning outcomes of their courses under four main headings:

• Knowledge and understanding - relating to subject content.

• Cognitive skills - such as analysis, synthesis and critical reasoning.

• Key skills - such as communication, information literacy, and learning how to learn.

• Practical and professional skills - as required by professional or regulatory bodies.

Identifying and grouping the main learning outcomes for courses already in existence had several advantages:

• Courses are designed and written by subject specialists and can be highly content driven. Cognitive and key skills development in particular may be embedded in a course, but may not be made explicit to students. Students, therefore, may identify subject content as their only learning and may not recognize, or be able to articulate, their other skills and abilities. Clear cognitive and key skill learning outcomes provide students with a 'language' with which to describe and articulate these skills to peers and employers.

• Assessment had not traditionally been designed to support an outcomes-approach. Identifying and grouping outcomes meant that a clearer relationship could be established between outcomes and the forms of assessment that would best support them. Clear learning outcomes also help to drive good formative assessment practice, giving opportunities to provide feedback to students against the outcomes to offer guidance about how to improve performance.

• OU courses must support the learning outcomes of awards. A curriculum map documents the relationship between courses and higher-level award outcomes. Identifying and grouping course outcomes creates clearer distinctions and relationships between courses and hence clearer progression pathways for students, within and across faculties, towards an award.

A similar identification process was carried out at award level to produce specifications for diplomas and degrees. A key factor here is that the OU is a highly modular course-based environment. Students register for individual courses not for programs of study. Although most awards contain some compulsory courses, the pathways taken by individual students can differ both in the courses they choose to take and the order in which they take them. From an award perspective the overall intended learning outcomes must be linked back, through the curriculum map, to the compulsory and core optional courses that the student must study. The assessment associated with the outcomes of individual courses can then be demonstrated as contributing to the assessment of the outcomes of the overall award. From a QA point of view, therefore, an award-level learning outcome can thus be audit trailed back to the course or courses where it has been developed and assessed.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

أهالي كربلاء يشيعون النعش الرمزي للإمام الحسن (عليه السلام) عند العتبتين المقدستين

العتبة العباسية المقدسة تقيم مجلس عزاء بذكرى شهادة الإمام الحسن (عليه السلام)

قاعة العرض المتحفي في العتبة العباسية المقدسة تشهد إقبالًا واسعًا من الزائرين

خلال لقائه ملاكات مدارس العميد.. سماحة السيّد الصافي يؤكّد أهمّية التعلّم المستمرّ الذي يفتح آفاق الفهم والمعرف

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

تسارع الشيخوخة.. متى يبدأ وأي الأعضاء أكثر تأثرا؟

9 مسببات شائعة للالتهاب المزمن قد تهدد صحتك

باحثون يطورون علاجا لهشاشة العظام.. النتائج مذهلة

تحمي من أمراض عديدة.. 6 فوائد لتناول البطاطا الحلوة

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

عودة التعاون الفضائي بين روسيا وأميركا.. وبحث ملفات "هامة"

المعلمون في خطر.. خاصية جديدة في "تشات جي بي تي" تشرح الدروس

بشرى لمرضى الشلل.. شريحة في الدماغ قد تتيح التحكم بالأدوات

مدينة غارقة.. هل يخفي قاع البحر الكاريبي سرّ حضارة مفقودة؟

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Action learning as a path forward

Implications of the study for enhancing assessment Questions raised by the study

Summary of findings

Contributions in the placement

Learning outcomes

Affordances and bricolage

Learning processes Qualitative differences in placement experiences

Results, analysis and discussions

Research methodology

Conceptualizing learning and its assessment in community placements

Ecology, Identity and Assessment: The Implications of a Case Study of Police Students Learning in Community Placements for Assessment

Combining Novel Pedagogic and IT Approaches to Align the Assessment of Workplace Learning with Criteria for Academic Credit Conclusions