ILO diagram: a novel conceptual model of intended learning outcomes

Achieving intended learning outcomes (ILOs) in education is an ongoing topic within distance learning and educational communities. The term "ILOs" has been introduced to indicate what learners will be able to do by the end of the course of study. Developing the ILO structure, in which the subject matter and their relationships are integrated with the capabilities to be learned, is a challenge to instructional designers. In this research, the ILO diagram – a novel conceptual model of intended learning outcomes – is proposed to support not only instructional designers in designing and developing courses of study, but also learners and instructors in performing the courses' learning and teaching activities.The research covers three objectives. First, in order to pioneer courses of study which should consider all stakeholders in education, the research aims primarily to reconcile constructivist and instructivist theories in order to propose an equivalent architecture, using ILOs to support learning and teaching. Second, more significantly, the research aims to contribute a novel conceptual model of ILOs (called an ILO diagram) using a diagrammatic technique. In the ILO diagram, ILO nodes are represented as the two-dimensional classification of a performance/content matrix based on the component display theory proposed by Merrill. The ILO relationships have formulated the hierarchical structure using the cognitive hierarchy comprising six levels adopted the Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Moreover, three types of the principal relationship, two types of the composite relationship, and three relationship constraints are proposed. Finally, the third objective of the research is to experimentally ascertain how the structured ILOs format conceptualised through the proposed ILO diagram can contribute to both teaching and learning.Furthermore, the three experimental studies were conducted to explore whether providing the well-defined structure of ILOs, conceptualised through the ILO diagram, can facilitate teaching and learning. In the first experiment, the main aim was to investigate the instructors’ satisfaction with using the ILO diagram in teaching. The results revealed that the proposed ILO diagram met the instructors’ satisfactions with higher ratings for perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude towards representing ILOs than the plain-text document. The second experiment was to investigate whether using the ILO diagram to facilitate learning can support learners to indicate the learning paths. The results revealed that the mean completeness of all learning paths was statistically significantly higher with the structured ILOs (ILO diagram), showing that the learners benefited from the ILO diagram in performing their self-regulated learning. Finally, the last experiment was to investigate how well the learners understand the conceptual representation of the ILO diagram. The results of the experiment revealed that the average mean of understandability for the conceptual representation of the ILO diagram was higher than for both the sentential and tabular representations. These findings indicate that the ILO diagram provides more understandability than the sentential and tabular representational styles of ILOs

Towards a Matching Strategy of Constructivism and Instructionism

There exists a traditional conflict in teaching between constructivism (learner’s perspective) and instructionism (instructor's perspective) because they are mutually exclusive and practitioners will support either one idea or the other. In this paper we attempt to bridge the gap between these two theories via a matching strategy through the intended learning outcomes. We propose that the philosophies of constructivism and instructionism can be used to balance the learner's knowledge and instructor's knowledge in order to provide suitable learning activities to the learners

An Equivalent Architecture of Learner's and Instructor's Knowledge through the Matching of Intended Learning Outcome

Constructivism and instructionism, two grounded theories of learning and teaching, are contradiction in terms of practitioner's perspective. This leads to an attempt to bridge the gap between these two theories by designing the balanced approach. In this paper an equivalent architecture of learner’s and instructor’s knowledge is introduced via a matching strategy through the intended learning outcome

Designing and diagraming an intended learning outcome structure: a case study from the instructors' perspective

The paper proposes the intended learning outcome (ILO) diagram -" a novel conceptual model for curriculum development. The design of an ILO structure and its components are introduced, and its corresponding ILO diagram and relationships are presented and discussed. An experimental study of how structured ILOs (visualised through an ILO diagram) meets instructors' satisfaction is reported and summarised. The results revealed that the mean ratings of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude towards representing ILOs, were significantly higher with the ILO diagram