The mapping process

When mapping the Graduate Attributes against your unit, ideally there would be a relationship between the unit objectives, the teaching and learning activities and the assessment tasks. Graduate Attributes may be realised through one or more of the unit key characteristics. Key characteristics refers to the unit objectives, content, learning activities and the assessment tasks.

Mapping your objectives

• Your objectives are different from your aims or goals. Aims usually reflect your orientation to education and are a general statement of intent. An overall aim or goal might be to teach for understanding, or a specific aim might be to produce graduates who have an understanding of the broad cultural context of their discipline. Often these are not stated, but are important in how you design and teach a unit.
  
  
• Objectives are more specific than aims or goals.
  
  
  1. Objectives for a whole unit will be more general than objectives for particular teaching sessions within the unit.
     
  2. Objectives should be simple, unambiguous but broad enough to convey your intentions.
     
  3. Objectives are sometimes called learning outcomes.
     
     
• Objectives can be classified into three types:
  
  
  1. Cognitive objectives: Knowledge that the student can display. See the following webpage for Bloom's categorisation of cognitive objectives [cognitive verbs].
  2. Affective objectives: Attitudinal objectives that influence the students' values and how they choose to act. The graduate attributes of social justice, ethics, social interaction and global perspective are within the affective domain and involve the students' values [affective verbs].
  3. Psychomotor skill development objectives: Physical skills that the student can perform [psychomotor skill development verbs].
     
     
• Objectives need to be expressed as verbs that students can enact.
  
  
• Cognitive objectives can be defined in terms of levels of understanding not just as a list of topics to be covered. John Biggs has developed such a system.
  
  
• When writing your objectives it can be useful to begin with the sentence 'At the completion of this unit the student will be able to ...'
  
  
• You might include in your map, objectives that are not mentioned in your study guide and/or that you don't explicitly explain to students. These implicit objectives may be embedded in the lecture or tutorial program. For example, one of your objectives might be to model appropriate ethical standards in your students professional training but this may not be explicity stated in any documentation.

See the below link for more information on framing unit aims and learning objectives.
Framing course aims and learning objectives

More details on writing unit objectives are available at:

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/EDTEC540/objectives/ObjectivesHome.html

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

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Mapping unit content

• Content refers to subject matter covered in lectures, tutorials, practical classes and readings.
  
  
• This might include a list of lecture and tutorial topics. You might group the lecture topics by theme or module or list each one. Similarly, you might group the areas covered in practical classes or list them individually.

Mapping unit learning activities

• These include the teaching and learning activities that you use to realise the objectives. They are the activities you require students to do with the content to achieve the objectives.
  
  
• The activities might be controlled by you, student controlled or peer controlled.

• The activities you set will probably increase in difficulty and require students to work more independently both on their own and in groups as they progress through a unit.
  


• Learning activities often overlap with unit assessment tasks.
  


• Learning activities may be totally or partially online.

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Mapping unit assessment

• Assessment tasks should address the unit objectives (or learning outcomes) so you can determine if the students have learned what the objectives state.
  
  
• Assessment can be done by the teacher, or can be peer or self-assessment.
  
  
• Types of assessment might include:

More information on assessment types

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References

John Biggs, 1999, Teaching for Quality Learning at University, SRHE and Open University Press, Buckingham, pp. 42 - 43.

David Kember, 1991, Writing Study Guides, Technical and Educational Services, Bristol, pp. 19 - 21.

David Newble and Robert Cannon, 1989, A Handbook for Teachers in Universities and Colleges: A Guide to Improving Teaching Methods, Kogan Page, London, pp.77 - 85.

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