Learning in higher education requires the development of transferable skills that students apply across a variety of topics. We will describe a strategy for integrating transferable skills and course topics throughout an online course to improve student learning and to enhance assessment of student learning.
Introduction
Our original intent for this Discovery Session was to explore how to assess student learning by looking at measurable, transferable skills that students apply across a variety of course topics. This approach to assessment has gained popularity over the past few years, and we believe it is the future of assessment processes in higher education. Examples of transferable skills include, but are not limited to, teamwork and collaboration; written, oral, or visual communication; critical thinking and analysis; information literacy; creativity and innovation; and quantitative skills. By focusing throughout the course on one or two transferable skills that students apply to a variety of content topics, students will be better prepared to respond to changing situations (i.e., gig economy, 21st century skills, and other unforeseen events). Furthermore, the knowledge explosion that has been and is currently occurring is expected to continue and most likely accelerate in the future. Easy access to information through the Internet creates the likelihood of frequently changing course content. Thus, incorporating transferable skills into learning assessment is a critical goal. To achieve this goal, we have developed the concept of milestones, which refer to assessments that measure both knowledge of content topics and transferable skills. Originally, in this session we planned to focus exclusively on how to create effective and engaging milestones. However, we discovered a complication.
Topic, Relevance, Interactivity
What we found as we proceeded to write about creating milestones was that we could not talk about milestones in isolation. Our aha moment occurred when we realized that milestones are completely interconnected with the course destination (overarching course goal) and learning activities (i.e., actions students take to acquire knowledge and skills). This aha moment shifted our session focus to more broadly emphasize the integration of transferable skills with content topics throughout an online course, rather than an isolated focus on milestones.
In this session, we will share our discovery of how the course destination and learning activities influence and interact with milestones. We will describe an effective strategy for integrating transferable skills with course topics throughout the course to ensure a more coherent and effective learning experience. We then invite you to reflect on and share your views about explicitly integrating skills that students apply to the course topics throughout an online course.
Touchpoints for Skill Integration in Online Courses
Our aha occurred when we realized that the only way to successfully create milestones is to integrate transferable skills with content throughout the online course. Critical touchpoints for integrating skills with content occur throughout the creation of the course.
The first touchpoint is the course destination. A course destination defines the overarching connection between the transferable skills students will develop and the essential content that students will learn in the online course.
The second touchpoint is the creation of learning assessments, which we call milestones. Milestones are products that allow students to demonstrate their ability to apply transferable skills to the content topics of the course. The milestones should be informed by and lead to the achievement of the course destination. Furthermore, the milestones must allow for measurement of both content topic knowledge and transferable skills.
The third touchpoint is the creation of the course learning activities. These explicitly created learning activities provide students with realistic, relevant, meaningful ways to develop transferable skills that students apply as they engage with the content topics through resources and through peer and instructor interaction and feedback. Each learning activity aligns with the course destination and culminates in a milestone where the students apply the transferable skills to the content topic.
Integrating and aligning transferable skills with course topics increases the overall coherence of an online course. Equally important, this alignment allows us to measure student growth/development of the transferable skills from the beginning to the end of the course. We suggest a pre-post strategy, perhaps using a rubric, as in effective way to measure growth.
In addition, information obtained from the milestones increases our understanding of how well we attained the expectation set by the course destination based on the students’ development of the transferable skills. This information, combined with additional assessment data, allows us to determine how to enhance the course to better meet students’ learning needs.
Session Take-aways
Transferable skills linked with content topics can be integrated throughout an online course. When the course destination, learning activities, and milestones emphasize the application of skills to content, an online course becomes more coherent and relevant to students. The information provided by the measurement of milestones can also be used to enhance courses to better meet students’ learning needs.
A Broader Perspective on Learning Assessment
Consider how transferable skills could be assessed in program, discipline, and/or general education (core) curriculum. Integrating a core set of transferable skills across programs and disciplines increases the consistency and coherence of learning assessment. This approach also allows faculty to more easily identify and share practices that support student learning.
Discovery Session Timeline
- Introduction of presenters & topic; session overview & topic relevance – 2 minutes
- Definition of terms with examples – 2 minutes
- Integration & touchpoints; implications – 8 minutes
- Session take-aways – 1 minute
- What’s next: Provocative questions for discussion – 1 minute
Provocative Questions
- How do you assess student learning in your online course?
- In assessment, which do you think is more important, content, skills, or both, and why?
- What are your thoughts and ideas about the integrating transferable skills with content topics throughout your online course?
- What suggestions do you have to improve learning assessment?
- What challenges does higher education face in providing and using assessment information on student learning at the course level? At the program or /discipline level? What suggestion do you have on how to address those challenges?