Teaching for Quality at University

I pretty much now consider the main point of this blog is to track the books I've read, and how I felt about them. This book is the first of many I'll be reading for my PhD, so I'll talk a little about it.

Teaching for Quality at University, by John Biggs and Catherine Tang, is one of the definitive books about outcomes-based education. He talks about Constructive Alignment, which is a method for designing courses that aims to ensure that the the students are learning what you want them to learn - aligning teaching and assessment to the intended learning outcomes of the course. It's a very well written book, easy to understand and follow. Academic writing is often poor, focused on accuracy rather than readability, so this was a pleasant surprise.

I chose this as my first book to read (my PhD supervisor has given me a list), because the Medical Program that most of my day job is about recently redesigned its curriculum, building the curriculum around Learning Objectives (which is our way of saying "Intended Learning Outcomes"). It has really helped me understand with more clarity what we're doing (I'm employed mainly as software designer, not educational designer, so my former ignorance on the topic is not as outrageous as on might at first think).

Great book; I'll probably have to read it again sometime, when I've learnt more about everything else related to learning.