Challenges of constructive alignment in engineering higher education

Abstract

Constructive alignment in teaching is a way to make students adopt a deep learning strategy. In pedagogic literature, several kinds of taxonomies exist that all categorize different levels of complexity of students understanding. The goal of constructive alignment is to have the same level of complexity throughout the course including: intended learning outcomes, teaching/ learning activities and assessment of performance. This sounds like common sense, but is it really achieved in reality? The purpose of this study is to find out if teachers actively work with constructive alignment when designing courses and what the challenges are of implementing constructive alignment in practice experienced by teachers in engineering higher education. To find out the use of constructive alignment and its challenges, eight courses at an engineering school was analysed. The data collection consisted of archival data about the courses and eight structured interviews with each of the course coordinators. The study confirmed existing research that a majority of teaching practices are not aligned. Moreover course coordinators do not seem to be guided by the concept of constructive alignment. The most encountered challenges by teachers when relating intended learning outcomes were variations in students pre-knowledge, and the students maturity in terms of writing reports and time management. The second most challenging aspects were lack of relevant course literature, and lack of resources such as number of teaching hours. Other perceived challenges were short course periods, large size of classes, difficulties to avoid double assessment of student in overlapping courses, or scheduling due to several courses running simultaneously.