Thomas Crosbie

Abstract

“Big Basic”: Rethinking ILOs in a level-7 professional course

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) are arguably the foundational concept in the emerging literature on aligned course design. However, the selection of ILOs is largely taken-for-granted in the literature. In traditional university courses, this is not a problem, since ILOs are assumed to be unproblematically derived from the course instructor’s expert knowledge of an academic field. The rare exception are ECTS Level-7 courses that are not rooted in established academic fields. Here, the challenge is to identify ILOs that allow students to reach simultaneously a high academic and high professional level of knowledge, skills and competencies. This Final Project explores that messy reality of designing a Level-7 professional course on military operations for Danish officers attending the Royal Danish Defence College. Following an exhaustive review of earlier course syllabi and evaluations, the project relied on an iterative process alternating between meetings with the teaching team and its advisory board. The end result is a set of ILOs that are both very tightly aligned with course content / assessment and equally satisfying to both academic and professional requirements. The main findings of the project are that Level-7 ECTS ambitions can be realized even in very non-academic professional teaching environments, although producing such dual-facing, highly aligned courses is extremely labor intensive and requires a close dialogue between stakeholders.