Student and teacher participation in subject outcomes development

In order to better understand the importance of various graduate outcomes for courses given in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, a two-part study was undertaken. First, a Delphi study of academic staff identified outcomes for all and any courses taught by the department. After two rounds of outcome collection, academic staff rated the importance of each outcome. A student survey, using the list of staff outcomes for the department, asked students to rate the relative importance of the same outcomes. Factor analysis was used to reduce the large numbers of outcomes suggested. A 5-factor solution with acceptable goodness-of-fit properties was proposed. The 5 Factors cover the areas of: teaching skills, curriculum theories and policy knowledge, assessment and evaluation strategies, student diversities, and curriculum planning. The data suggested that students' conception of learning outcomes largely resembled the conceptions of academic - — staff, though the staff shows a tendency to distinguish the factor areas more robustly. This perhaps suggests that teachers have a better understanding about the outcomes than students. The results are being used to inform the development of outcomes based learning and teaching resources within the department.