Before setting up objectives

Reprinted by kind permission of the author, originally published in Biggs, J. 1999, Teaching for Quality Learning at University Buckingham, UK: The Society for Research into Higher Education & The Open University Press, pp.46-48, 51-52.

This extract delineates the ranges of understanding we need in teaching our units, and defines our priorities in terms of levels of understanding for different topics. The levels of understanding can be described as verbs in ascending order of cognitive complexity that parallel the SOLO taxonomy. This gives us a wide range of levels that can be adapted to the levels appropriate to particular units, from first to higher years.

High-level, extended abstract involvement is indicated by such verbs as 'theorize', 'hypothesize', 'generalize', 'reflect', 'generate' and so on. They call for the student to conceptualize at a level extending beyond what has been dealt with in actual teaching. The next level of involvement, relational, is indicated by 'apply', 'integrate' 'analyse', 'explain' and the like; they indicate orchestration between facts and theory, action and purpose. 'Classify', 'describe', 'list' indicate a multistructural level of involvement; the understanding of boundaries, but not of systems. 'Memorize', 'identify', 'recognize' are unistructural: direct, concrete, each sufficient to itself, but minimalistic.

Figure 3.2 illustrates the point visually. A relevant component is depicted as l, so that unistructural has one of them, multistructural several, relational integrates them with a concept or structure, and extended abstract generalizes them to a new area. With each step, typical verbs are associated that might be useful in formulating curriculum objectives:

Click on the diagram to see an explanation of the SOLO categories.

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The verbs in the staircase are general, indicating what each family, from lowest to highest, might look like. Particular content areas and topics would have their own specific verbs as well, which you would need to specify to suit your own unit. The following questions need addressing:

• Why are you teaching the subject? To acquaint students with the topics within an area, or as a central plank in their understanding?
  
  
• Is it an introductory or advanced subject? In first-year subjects taught for acquaintance, an extended abstract or theoretical level of understanding is likely to be too high for even an A grade. The answer also varies according to why students are enrolled: a pass in Anatomy I might be defined differently for students in first year Medicine, then for students in a Diploma in Occupational Therapy.

These decisions will fall within any range definable by the four SOLO levels, which can refer to specific terminology, to theories and to principles. This is a broad range, and it helps to subdivide the SOLO categories. This can be done in any way that suits. An example follows, with (a) and (b) referring to simple and complex levels, respectively, within each category:

Unistructural

(a) simple naming, terminology;
(b) focusing on one conceptual issue in a complex case.

(b) is clearly more abstract and higher level, but is unistructural in that only one feature is given serious consideration.

Multistructural

(a) a disorganized collection of items, a 'shopping list';
(b) 'knowledge-telling': a strategy used in essay-writing in which the student 'snows' the marker with masses of detail, often using a narrative genre inappropriately but with the desired effect (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1987).

(a) is a simple list, which may nevertheless be adequate for some purposes, while (b) may well address abstract content, and be quite impressive in its way, although in most cases the structure is simplified and wrong.

Relational

(a) understanding, using a concept that integrates a collection of data;
(b) understanding how to apply the concept to a familiar data set or to a problem.

(a) is a declarative understanding, (b) functioning, which requires (a) for the application to work. Many tertiary objectives require this distinction.

Extended abstract

(a) relating to existing principle, so that unseen problems can be handled;
(b) questioning and going beyond existing principles.

(a) is probably the highest level in most undergraduate work, with (b) a surprising bonus if it occurs. (b) is often called 'post-formal', the sort of understanding required to do postgraduate research (Collis and Biggs 1983).

As the SOLO taxonomy gives a good sense of the hierarchy in learning, it may be a useful guide for defining the grading categories appropriate to one's own subject (Biggs 1992). Individual teachers can use it or not as they wish to derive their own categories. Some will find their own experience sufficient in itself.

However the levels are derived, they need to be delineated clearly, and verbs help in doing that. In particular, the use of verbs to structure the objectives emphasizes that learning and understanding come from student activity. Practically speaking, verbs are concrete, easy for you to handle and for students to understand, and they can be related to all stages of teaching: objectives, teaching/learning activities and assessment tasks. The discipline would determine what verbs would be appropriate. A useful exercise would be to list some of the key verbs in your teaching of a particular unit, at those levels you designate.

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Getting the curriculum in focus

Before deciding particular objectives we need to:

1. Decide what kind of knowledge is to be involved.
2. Select the topics to teach. But beware: 'The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage...'
3. Decide the purpose for teaching the topic, and hence the level of knowledge desirable for students to acquire. We need to prioritize, by requiring that important topics are understood at a higher level than less important topics.
4. Put the package of objectives together and relate them to assessment tasks so that the results can be reported as a final grade.

References

Bereiter, C. and Scardamalia, M. (1987) The Psychology of Written Composition, Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum.

Biggs, J.B. (1992) A qualitative approach to grading students, HERDSA News, 14(3), 3-6.

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