Outcomes Based Teaching and Learning? What's that?

OBTL- Student Guidelines

As a CityUHK student, you should be aware that City University of Hong Kong was one of the first universities in HK to embark on a proactive plan to implement OBTL in all its academic programmes.

What does it mean exactly? It means that everything your tutor/teacher/professor asks you to do has an outcome (Intended Learning Outcome/ILO). You don't do Learning Activities without a learning outcome attached to it.

And why is it better? Because now you know what you are expected to be able to do at the end of the class / tutorial / lecture / project / programme and it gives you clear directions to improve your learning and of course achieve a super high GPA, leading to great studies and career prospects!

Our main key word here is TRANSFORMATION: from student to professional

We all know that, as CityUHK students, our lives will be very busy with assignments/projects/field trips, particularly during semester time.  We provide you a quick and easy to use e-learning tool called the Examples Tool (E.T) which supplies clear examples of some possible constructively aligned components that you will encounter during your studies at City University.

Getting Started

Welcome to this e-learning student-guide to OBTL. This website is intended to provide a basic introduction to the concepts of OBTL and is designed to help you comprehend, with the help of examples, what are Action Verbs, Teaching and Learning Activities, and Assessment Tasks.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO's)

Intended Learning Outcomes  are what YOU are expected to be able to do after a lecture/course/programme/project/field trip etc. They are:

• Expressed from the YOUR perspective.
• Expressed in the form of action verbs.
• Related to criteria for assessing your performance.

They are called Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO's) because in good learning environments, you may also learn many additional things about the academic subject, working with others, dealing with difficult people, teamwork, and general life and learning skills which are not necessarily included in our ILO's. These are called Unintended Learning Outcomes.

Teaching and Learning Activities (TLA's)

A Teaching and Learning Activity (TLA) is designed by our professors/tutors to help us achieve the Learning Outcomes of the course/tutorial/lecture/project etc.

If the ILO is to create/design a professional bilingual online CV using Dreamweaver

The TLA's you teacher could ask you to do would be to

• Create a bilingual CV and get familiarized with the basic features/functions of Dreamweaver. 
• The second TLA would be to work in groups, check and do an independent web-search and compare various professional CVs, to identify trends, useful vocabulary or redundancies.
• The third TLA would be to follow the procedures you have learned to use Dreamweaver and create your professional CV rubrics.

Assessment Tasks (AT's)

Assessment Tasks are all the essay-type assignments, projects, presentations, quizzes, roles plays, e-portfolios etc. our teachers ask us to do to demonstrate evidence that a particular Learning Outcome has been achieved.

ILO's, TLA's and AT's are aligned, you know how you will be assessed:

• ILO's and TLA's use actions verbs (e.g. what it is we can do to after successfully completing the Teaching and Learning Activities/ TLA's)
• The teacher provides us with assessment rubrics criteria

What is Constructive Alignment?

In OBTL the outcomes (ILOs) that YOU should achieve at the end of the program / course / project / field trip are the learning target.

In other words, Constructive Alignment rests on a view of teaching as supporting your learning: It is not what your teachers do but what you are expected to be able to do at the end of your study that is the most important here.