Open Access"By the end of this course you should be able to...": Towards Constructive Alignment in the SLP Curriculum
Author(s) -
Michelle Pascoe,
Shajila Singh
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
south african journal of communication disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.296
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 2225-4765
pISSN - 0379-8046
DOI - 10.4102/sajcd.v55i1.772
Subject(s) - constructive , curriculum , parallels , process (computing) , mathematics education , journaling file system , psychology , reflection (computer programming) , computer science , pedagogy , course (navigation) , course evaluation , focus (optics) , medical education , higher education , engineering , medicine , programming language , mechanical engineering , data file , physics , optics , aerospace engineering , law , political science
This paper describes the way in which constructive alignment is being implemented in the Speech-language Pathology (SLP) programme at a South African university. We focus on one of the courses, Human Communication Development, that comprises the four year programme of study. A first year, first semester course that is attended by both SLP and Audiology students, it aims to introduce fundamentals of the communication process and its development at a pre-clinical level. We aim to show how theoretical principles from higher education can be implemented at a micro level in a course of the SLP Programme. The principles of constructive alignment are introduced and exemplified through description of the revision of this course. All academic and clinical staff involved in the programme contributed to the development of the course. A template for curriculum revision is presented which allows for the explicit alignment of intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities and criterion referenced assessment. Staff participants recorded reflections on their own learning in personal reflection logs. Through this journaling process parallels are drawn between the 'teachers' voyage of discovery and that of the students.