A student union has asked that learning outcomes be circulated before the teaching that is supposed to produce them, igniting a dispute about whether education is a process or a document.
The request, tabled at the first senate of term, notes that outcomes already exist, are already printed in handbooks, and are already used to justify the price of the handbook. What students want is to see them in time to decide whether the module will do what the module says.
A spokesman for the union said the current arrangement—outcomes revealed in week three, refined in week seven, and assessed in week twelve against a rubric distributed in week eleven—created “avoidable uncertainty.” He used the word transparency. Several senators used the word spoiler.
Faculty opinion divided, as it does, between those who write learning outcomes and those who read them aloud. The writers argued that outcomes are a professional craft, best appreciated after contact hours have made them true. The readers argued that they are a compliance craft, best appreciated by people who are not in the room.
“If they know the outcomes at the start,” said one professor, “they will merely memorize them.” A student observed that this was already the assessment.
The education committee proposed a compromise: outcomes would be released in week one in draft, confirmed in week four, and “dialogically co-owned” thereafter. The union asked what dialogically meant for the exam. The committee said the exam would remain a surprise, in the interests of authenticity.
A deputy vice-chancellor for student experience said the university was listening. Listening, she explained, was itself an outcome. The union asked where it appeared in the handbook. She said it appeared in the strategy.
Legal affairs, consulted in case the request constituted a consumer issue, advised that students had a right to information and that information had a right to be updated. The module descriptor will therefore continue to say “indicative.”
The senate voted to thank the students for their engagement and to refer the matter to a working group on assessment literacy. The working group will produce outcomes. These will be circulated in due course, which is to say after the group has learned them.