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14Стратегия обучения, ориентированного на результат, как метод повышения мотивации и качества обучения студентов вузов.
Анализ восприятия и практического опыта преподавателей
Сергеев Павел Сергеевич.
PhD, Сьямэньский Университет (Китай), Институт Исследования Высшего Образования, psergeev@outlook.com
В последние годы в международной индустрии Высшего Образования наметился переход от использования традиционных методов обучения к стратегиям преподавания, ориентированным на учащихся и фокусирующимся на результатах обучения. Вместе с тем, концепция образования, ориентированного на результат (ООР), может выглядеть многообещающей на бумаге, но все еще не имеет четко сформулированной доказательной базы, позволяющей утверждать, что ООР оказывает какое-либо положительное влияние на мотивацию и результаты обучения студентов.
Основными целями данного исследования являются: а. сравнить ООР и традиционные стратегии преподования и б. определить контекст, в котором система ООР может либо негативно повлиять, либо обеспечить преимущества над традиционной системой обучения с точки зрения мотивации и результатов обучения студентов.
На основе интервью с преподавателями и анализа существующих практик было установлено, что эффект ООР на мотивацию студентов и результаты обучения не однороден и зависит от контекста применения стратегии обучения. Так, эффект ООР будет значительно варьироваться в зависимости от области обучения, содержания программы или целей обучения. В большинстве случаев система ООР условно эффективна или не эффективна для преподавания дисциплин, требующих изучения большого объема знаний или проведения глубоких исследований. В тоже время, социальные науки, гуманитарные науки, прикладные естественные науки и междисциплинарные предметы могут выиграют в рассматриваемом ключе от применения ООР. Исследование также показало, что ряд критериев при применении стратегии ООР будет способствовать повышению эффективности и результативности системы. Эти принципы включают планирование ясных и значимых целей обучения, подход к разработке учебных программ, основанный на конечных целях, а также инструктирование преподавательского состава по вопросам и принципам применения ООР. Ключевые слова: Компетенции студентов; методы и системы преподавания; мотивация студентов к обучению; система обучения компетенциям; разработка учебных программ
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Introduction
The Knowledge-Based Economy reliance on intellectual capabilities and workforce autonomy imposes new requirements to today's graduates of universities and colleges. In recent years, the methods of increasing education efficiency to ensure career readiness of graduates has been one of the most frequently discussed topics among stakeholders in the higher education industry. Knight and Yorke [1] suggested that there is a close relationship between employability and efficient learning. As it will be illustrated below, the quality and efficiency of the educational process are tightly linked with teaching strategies, students' perception of learning, students' motivation and ultimately with the approaches students adopt in the course of learning.
The concept of different learning approaches was originally studied and theorized by Marton and Saljo [2]. The authors found out that in the process of studying students may adopt either deep approach to learning in which students actively and successfully search for meaning and critically analyze studied content, or surface approach to learning, where students are simply focused on memorizing and reproducing, resulting in lower quality learning outcomes.
A number of research reports [3][4, p. 135-150][5][6, p. 125-134] show that cultivation of learning approaches is catalyzed by students' perception of learning, teaching in general and students' satisfaction and motivation in particular. For example, Marsh [7] identified the amount of workload, the quality of teaching instructions, interest in students, teacher-to-students interaction, and the quality of assessment procedures among the most important planes of effective instruction at university level. Moreover, students' competencies and learning results, approaches to learning, motivation and education framework are tightly linked with each other. Figure 1 clearly illustrates this relationship. Education system/teaching framework has principal influence on students' interest to learning and to the way how students process material being studied. The better the perception of learning and the higher the motivation of the students to learn is, the higher the
probability that they will they will choose in-depth exploration of the content, but not content memorization. This choice, in its turn, results in the higher success rate of students getting necessary competencies that ultimately prepare graduates for a successful transition into the workplace.
Figure 1. Knowledge acquisition, approach to learning and education system relation
However, which education system/teaching framework - now and in the long run - will serve the purpose of the students' motivator best? What components must constitute such a system considering current and long-term requirements of the market, economy and society? To answer these questions, we should consider the alternatives which presently exist.
Obe and traditional education systems overview
In the 90s of the last century a totally new education system slowly and flabbily started challenging the traditional educational paradigms, trying to break the wall of widespread criticism. The new systematized framework was conceptualized by the William Spady [8] and was called OBE. Later this concept was further developed by John Biggs [9]. The author called the new one "Constructive Alignment" (CA), the teaching framework which can be used for individual courses, for degree programmes, and at the institutional level, for aligning all teaching to graduate attributes.
Spady [8] states that in OBE environment the conceptual change of designing learning experience should include the three major stages. The starting point is determining so-called Learning Outcomes or LOs. According the author, learning outcomes are competencies which students must demonstrate at the end of significant learning experiences. The second stage of designing learning experience under OBE is related to determining content, teaching methods and timing which will help students to accomplish learning "ends" defined at the first stage. As LOs are considered the culminating points of learning period, it is emphasized that only after the final LOs are set, tutors proceed to designing curriculum back from that point, where students are required to end up [8][10]. The third and final step in OBE systems is designing assessment. In OBE systems, assessment is an instrument for students to
demonstrate their competencies successfully and for teachers to make sure the teaching/learning process is successful[8].
Main differences between traditional education and OBE systems lie on the three major planes, namely determining objectives of learning experience, designing content and instructions and evaluating students' performance. First of all, traditional systems mostly operate with so-called course aims which are based on internal mental process, associated with non-demonstration words, such as 'know', 'understand', 'believe', 'remember', etc. In contrast, learning outcomes mechanism suggests that goals are set to what students are supposed to do in the end of learning experience. This is ensured, among other things, by using such active verbs as 'be able to demonstrate, use, determine, explain, evaluate, etc.' [8][11]. Secondly, in traditional systems, teaching is basically built around transferring knowledge and skills of teachers to students, and providing students with an environment in which they could learn, while under OBE, teachers select or develop material based on culminating competences, which students have to demonstrate in the end. The third important difference between the systems is related to assessment of students results. OBE assessment does not prescribe how well a student must perform, but to enable students to show, that the knowledge and skills they have learned correspond with defined learning outcomes. In contrast, traditional systems use quantitative measures - such as grade point averages - which provide information on how students perform on the test compared to others in the reference group.
The big question remains unanswered
The liberal use of the OBE/CA standards helped generate much data regarding benefits and flaws of the new paradigm. Today the stakeholders' attitude towards it varies from absolute admiration to slashing criticism and rejection. According to the proponents of OBE, learning effectiveness and instructional quality may increase with the implementation of OBE principles [10] as well as "student motivation and achievement, and staff effectiveness and morale, typically increase well beyond previous experience and expectations" [8, p.57]. On the other hand, there are a number of arguments 'against' the new system. For example, Williams [11], claims that OBE may degrade student learning and denigrate traditional motivations for learning, being test scores. This happens because under OBE no student fails. On the same note, Donnelly [12] and Mulder et al. [13] argue that formal approaches to teaching are more efficient in terms of time and effort and more successful in teaching the basics. Moreover, the approaches to assessment under OBE do not support learning but frustrate it.
These studies, however, have a number of gaps, the most important of which is the lack of a valid and reliable foundation which proves negative or positive influence of OBE on students' motivation and learning effectiveness. At the same time the existence of the opposite viewpoints regarding this problem indicates
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that outcome-based education effect on students' motivation may vary in different contexts and under certain conditions to the point when OBE can either increase or decrease students' motivation in comparison with traditional education system. This study seeks to answer the question whether the above-mentioned contexts and conditions can be defined and generalized.
RESULTS OF THE STUDY
Most of interviewees agreed on the point that the effect of OBE depends significantly on the body of knowledge and the branch of study (see Figure 2). Below we will separately examine OBE in the aspect of the negative / positive impact.
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RESEARCH OBJECTIVE, DESIGN, METHODS AND LIMITATIONS
The major objectives of this study were formulated as follows:
to determine the context(s) in which OBE system either negatively affects or provides benefits to students' interest in learning as compared with traditional teaching approaches, and
to determine possible conditions which should be met in order to achieve positive effect of OBE.
This exploratory research mostly focused on collecting qualitative data about the ways of how OBE approach was perceived by educators with regards to students' motivation and attainments. Primary data was collected by means of conducting 11 standardized, open-ended interviews with educators. On the average, each interview lasted 45 minutes. In each interview, the idea, purposes and principles of OBE were elicited and discussed with participants before proceeding to the main point. The discussion was neutral in essence, meaning that no advantages/disadvantages of OBE were examined at this point. At the main stage of the interview it was suggested to participants to answer a number of questions basing on either existing experience or a modeled case. The main discussion topic was determined as follows: elements, principles, features of OBE, which may or does exert an influence -either positive or negative - on students' motivation and learning effectiveness as compared with traditional teaching.
Reliability and validity were ensured by the participants' representativeness. The study examined views of both instructors who had practiced all or some elements of OBE, and tutors who had only applied traditional teaching approaches. In addition, interviewees represented both liberal arts and sciences. Finally, participants' composition was internationally diversified in order to ensure representation of different education cultures. The educators of the following education providers were interviewed: Xiamen University, Xiamen Technological University, Moscow State University, Higher National Diploma programme of the UK. Existing OBE researchers' findings and conclusions regarding the studied problem were integrated into the present study as the second dimension of analysis.
In this study students' and other stakeholders' survey was not conducted intentionally. Exploring attitude of educators- as the primary participants of education process - was considered to be sufficient to achieve research objectives. However, in order to further research the problem additional methods and instruments may be employed.
Sciences which Social, applied
2 focus on natural sciences,
2 fundamental interdisciplinary
I knowledge and cross-
and/or scientific disciplinary
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Figure 2. Effect of OBE in various contexts.
As illustrated in Figure 2, most participants (n=8) considered OBE approaches to be incompatible and even harmful for disciplines, related to social, natural sciences and humanities, based on fundamental knowledge and scientific research. Such disciplines and sciences include but are not limited to: theoretical physics, biology, theoretical computer science, theoretical chemistry. The following two extras from respondents' interviews illustrate how they described this position on the question:
Not every subject, discipline or teaching objective is good for using all the principles of OBE. For example, conducting scientific research, among other things, require inspiration and curiosity, which are impossible to code as learning outcomes.
Learning outcomes are unlikely to result in effective teaching of broad and systematic knowledge. If we speak about natural theoretical disciplines, the volume of information is so huge that a reasonable number of learning outcomes cannot cover every piece of it.
At the same time, as Figure 2 clearly shows, the respondents (n=10) stated that students' motivation and learning results might increase if OBE would be employed for teaching social sciences and humanities, such as politics, law, linguistics, economics, psychology, culture, literature, psychology, sociology and etc. In addition, applied sciences or disciplines adopting interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches - such as bioeconomics, sociobiology, neuropsychology, materials chemistry and others - in most cases might also provide more effective OBE learning experience.
For example, the educator with vast experience in applying OBE approaches stated that:
It is good to use OBE for teaching business and finance disciplines. If objective learning outcomes are used, the students will get better ideas about the course and, thus, may become more motivated to study.
Another interviewee expressed the following idea regarding applicability of OBE:
While theoretical natural sciences are hard to consider as a good field for OBE experiments,
interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary programmes may significantly benefit from outcome-based education. For example, materials and components science includes, among other things, elements of chemistry and physics. As the students do not need as much theoretical information here, we can use learning outcomes mirroring corresponding objectives of the specialists in this field.
At the same time, the consensus view seemed to be that a number of conditions should be met for OBE to perform its functions successfully. For example, as regards to learning outcomes, educators claimed that LOs must be as clear and concise as possible, and LOs should be of significance for students' future performances and career (n=11). The following quotations illustrate how respondents describe this problem:
Some LO are easy to understand and easy to explain but some are not. Some are so weird and ambiguous, that even teachers do not know what exactly must be instructed to achieve them.
Another participant explained why it might affect the results of learning. The expert stated that vague outcomes could be 'gamed', meaning that either teachers or students could intentionally or unintentionally instruct or demonstrate knowledge which was different to that planned by LOs creators. The respondent argued that:
The depth, the breadth, and the nuances sometimes make it very difficult to define clearly the objective learning outcomes. Apart from the requirement of being specific and clear, LOs must bring value to students. But in the real life it is often not like this. For instance, LOs can be 'gamed' and usually do not cover all the objectives, originally set for the course by curriculum designers.
Besides discussing learning outcomes, participants commented on curriculum and assessment elements of OBE. The following three quotations provide some sense of respondents' views about the content design, teaching activities and students' evaluation under OBE:
Main idea of LO should be set in advance but the contents to achieve main idea should be entirely designed by the tutors. If properly aligned with LOs, this kind of backward design is better than the traditional transfer of information to students. Students' knowledge should not be the goal of teaching. The way how they can apply this knowledge in the real-life context is more important.
First, we look at the course objectives, and then choose the content and activities. We try to make students as engaged into learning as possible. When students feel that they are the center of active learning, when they are knowledge creators, instead of being knowledge consumers, they become more responsible and motivated.
Objective outcomes increase fairness of students' assessment. We offer our students different ways of how they can demonstrate their competences. It can be an individual or a group presentation, an individual
or a group essay or even a viva voce examination. In most cases, students can choose the way which fits them best. The only requirement is to demonstrate the evidence of their skills and knowledge related to learning outcomes.
The general consensus between the respondents (n=11) was that that OBE backward curriculum designing would require reconsideration of teaching methods, content and timing. Most of interviewees (n=7) stated that in the OBE environment instructors would have to put more efforts into selecting appropriate material and sources, designing lessons using different teaching techniques, performing permanent monitoring of students' progress towards achieving LO and providing a lot of feedback to students. The following extract from an interview illustrates how one of educators determined the key success factor of the effective employment of the OBE teaching methods:
As compared with traditional teaching, in OBE we should spend more time for mastering the art of designing educational programmes. We also must have broader knowledge in the subject which we teach, so that to be able to deliver the knowledge and application of studied concepts with our own approach to the learners.
Discussions
As it was shown above, there is no consensus among scientists on positive effect of outcome -based education on students' learning results that we - as instructors - would like our students to get. Combining our findings with those in the existing literature, it can be argued that, OBE may either increase the efficiency of teaching/learning or negatively affect both students and teachers. The respondents who participated in the research stated that several questions should be addressed before massively implementing the new system in education providers. The ascent was made not only on the successful employment of the new system, but mostly on it's effect on students' motivation and learning results.
The major concern of interviewees was the fact that OBE is practically inefficient - if feasible - in the context of teaching disciplines, related to social, natural sciences and humanities, based on fundamental knowledge and scientific research. Content- and research- heavy courses are difficult to effectively design with the limited number of the students-will-be-able-to-dos in mind. Though OBE practice for such disciplines facilitates developing and unifying teaching content, teaching goals and standards, but, at the same time, it may significantly decrease the breadth of the study programme. Concerning this point, the current literature abounds with the observations which may be regarded as supportive to the above-mentioned viewpoint. Most of OBE critics [11][12][13] claim that OBE dumbs down the curriculum, decreasing its breadth and even depth. The authors state that learning outcomes narrow focus of the knowledge considerably as traditional rigorous academic content is omitted or reduced.
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In addition, respondents stated that the learning outcomes themselves may significantly effect the learning results. According to the participants, LOs must be designed in a clear, concise and unambiguous way. Moreover, they must be of the high value to students. OBE followers [8][10][14] agree on the point that if LOs are set properly, the students' motivation and learning results may increase considerably. The researchers state that knowing exact outcomes and values they will bring can help students choose module and programme according with their interests. In addition, LOs enable students to have clear information on what is required from them to demonstrate in the end of a learning experience. Unambiguous LOs set specific targets and may illuminate uncertainty in the learning process. Our findings confirm this statement. Most of respondents agreed that learning outcomes would help minimize collisions connected with unexpected or illogical requirements to what students must know and be able to do. This would increase the objectivity, and subsequently, might have positive influence on students' motivation.
The third concern of respondents indirectly influences students' motivation and learning results. It is more related to teachers being overwhelmed with developing different content, assessment methods and instruction techniques for different learning outcomes. Most of the participants stated that the implementation of the new system will definitely increase time and efforts required to prepare to lessons and assessments. On the same note, one the main object of OBE critics in the existing literature [12][15][16] is the negative impact of the OBE curriculum and assessment components on instructors. The opponents claim that in the situation, when curriculum and assessments are not predetermined, OBE institutions do not provide clear and sufficient guidance and retraining for teachers, educators become overwhelmed by a huge number of LOs and decisions about what content should be taught and how it should be delivered. Thus, instead of encouraging students, OBE may start playing for the opposite team, messing up the entire learning process.
So, does it mean that OBE has a questionable future if applied for increasing students' motivation and learning results? Factoring existing literature to our findings, we can argue that the answer is in fact not that obvious. This study made it clear, however, that A. effect of OBE is context related and B. the implementation of the OBE as an "ecosystem" with the principle of totality in mind requires putting special attention to training of instructors, mapping LOs and coordination the process LOs design for the curriculum and lesson plans of an education provider.
At the same time, all the participants stated that "o some elements of OBE can be efficiently applied even S without such a global implementation approach. For o> example, even in the context of teaching theoretical S and research-heavy disciplines, interviewees en advocated active learning and student-centered z approaches. They underlined, that though OBE is not
applicable as such, but the learner-centered instructions and modalities may have a positive effect on students' results.
Moreover, practical use of LOs as well as their positive influence on students' motivation was not denied by any of the respondents. In order to support this statement several example of implementing LOs at the federal levels are given below. For example, recently European Commission has rethought education approaches for countries of Bologna process, with even more focus on learning outcomes [17]. In Russia there also exists a so-called "Federal state educational standard", a set of mandatory requirements for the achievement of a certain qualification or requirements to the profession, specialty and direction of training, which includes the list of LOs for each occupation. In the USA there are no centralized requirements to either curriculum design or even learning outcomes. However, there are attempts to build a system or a framework which will satisfy the needs of all the stakeholders while staying voluntary. One of such successful attempts is called Degree Qualification Profile [14], which is based on the LOs concept and suggests five basic areas of learning including knowledge, skills and applications that enable graduates to succeed in today's economy and civil society.
These examples partly support our findings showing that LOs may be considered an effective and efficient instrument of improving quality of teaching/learning and ultimately to better prepare students to become workforce in the knowledge-based economy. At the same time, further research is required to prove the preliminary conclusions made in in this study as well as to prove of rebut the perspectivity of OBE system as a whole for various contexts.
Conclusion
The problem of relevance gaps between graduates' competencies and requirement of economies and societies has been gaining importance in many countries. Educators seek to develop and implement education frameworks which will help decrease this discrepancy, in particular by means of stimulating students to apply deep approach to learning. Outcome-based education system is considered to be one of the possible solutions. Numerous countries have recently implemented OBE systems at different levels, including the level of higher education.
This study revealed a number of possible threats as well as explored a number of benefits for OBE in terms of students' motivation and learning results. As it was suggested, in certain contexts OBE should be implemented with special care, if implemented at all.
At the same time, the study has enabled the author to suggest that there will probably be a statistically significant increase / decrease in motivation and learning results of students who have completed the educational course using OBE approach as opposed to those students who only followed the traditionally designed course. The effect will depend on the field of
study and program objectives as illustrated in Figure 2 of this project. The test of this hypothesis is suggested by the author as the future research area. It is recommended to apply the mix of quantitative and qualitative methods for such a study with the primary focus on action research coupled with the survey of students' motivation and learning results dynamics.
Data availability statement
This study is based on the analysis of the educators' views about OBE with regards to students' motivation and attainments. The educators of the following education providers were interviewed: Xiamen University, Xiamen Technological University, Moscow State University, Higher National Diploma programme of the UK. The qualitative data (interview quotations) used to support the findings of this study are included within the article.
Funding and conflict of interest statement
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The author declares that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
An analysis of educators' perceptions of the effect of outcome-based education on students' motivation and learning results in the higher education context Sergeev P.S.
Xiamen University
In recent years the movement away from the traditional teaching strategies to a more student-centered and outcome-based education approach has been gaining international popularity and support. The outcome-based education concept may look promising on paper, but still lacks a clearly articulated research evidence that OBE has any positive impact on students' motivation and learning results. The main objectives of the study were to contrast OBE and traditional education systems, and to determine the context(s) in which OBE system may either negatively affect or provide benefits to students' interest in learning as compared with traditional teaching approaches. Basing on interviews with educators and analysis of existing OBE practices it was found that OBE strategies could not be generalized to ensure positive effect on students' motivation and learning results in the higher education context. The effect of OBE would vary significantly depending on the field of study, programme content or teaching objectives. In most cases theory- and research-heavy courses might be impacted in the negative manner, while social sciences, humanities, applied natural sciences and interdisciplinary disciplines would benefit from the adoption of OBE. The research also suggested that a number of criteria for applying OBE principles would contribute to a system's effectiveness and efficiency. These principles include clarity and significance of learning outcomes, focus on backward curriculum design and active learning, and OBE guidance for teachers. Keywords: Outcome-based education; students' motivation; students' competences; teaching practices; curriculum design
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