Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol.

8 (2011): 1-19 1

Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-

based Teaching and Learning in Malaysian
Higher Education

JOHN BIGGS1
Honorary Professor of Psychology
University of Hong Kong
http://mjli.uum.edu.my

& Honorary Associate

School of Psychology
University of Tasmania
jbigss@bigpond.com1

CATHERINE TANG
Educational Consultant

ABSTRACT

The decision by the Minister of Higher Education, that Malaysian

post-secondary institutions should move to outcomes-based
teaching and learning (OBTL), involves a change in teaching
in over 1,000 institutions. This massive changeover would be
accomplished using the “Train-the-Trainers” model in a series of
workshops. We are proud to play a role in the first of these Train-
the-Trainers programmes. In this article we explain how OBTL
was conceptualised in the constructive alignment model, and how
this first programme was structured. The major outcome was that
each trainer would devise their own training programme to suit the
conditions of their institution. The results were impressive but there
were some difficulties; mainly to do with limiting the number of
intended learning outcomes to a workable number, that would need
to be addressed in order to achieve optimal outcomes.

INTRODUCTION

The Higher Education Learning and Teaching Initiative (HELTI)

was launched by the Minister of Higher Education, YB. Dato’ Seri
Mohamed Khaled Nordin on November 23, 2009. HELTI uses
the Train-the-Trainers model, by which 1,035 handpicked Master
Trainers will acquire the skills and knowledge needed to provide the
staff development needed for over 56,000 academics nationwide.
 2 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

The first Train-the Trainers programme, “Quality Teaching

for Learning”, was held on 23 – 25 February, 2010, and was
introduced by Dato’ Professor Dr. Ahmad Zainuddin, Director
of Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT) Malaysia.
The programmes organized by AKEPT’s Centre for Learning and
Teaching are part of the National Higher Education Strategic Plan
to improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education
institutions. The “Quality Teaching for Learning” programme was
designed to provide participants with the relevant expertise to design
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an in-house training programme in outcomes-based learning and

teaching in their own institutions using the constructive alignment
model.

OUTCOMES-BASED TEACHING AND LEARNING

Outcomes-based teaching and learning (OBTL) requires a major

shift in perspective, from traditional methods of teaching that rely
on the transmission of content to students, to engaging students in
actively constructing their own knowledge.
Traditional teaching starts from the perspective of the teacher:
“What topics or content do I teach?” Traditional teaching methods
are expository, and the assessment checks how well the message has
been received and understood – hence the common use of lectures,
demonstrations, tutorials for clarification, and exams that rely on
reporting back.
In outcomes-based teaching the question is not “What topics
do I teach?”, but “What do I want my students to be able to do
after they have learned what is in the curriculum?” For example,
we don’t teach psychology to student teachers to see how much
they can tell us about the psychology we have taught them, but how
have their teaching decisions been changed as a result of having
learned psychology. Thus, in OBTL, we go further than specifying
the topics to be taught; we define the outcomes we want our students
to achieve. Doing this swings our perspective around 180°, from a
teacher-centred to a student-centred approach to teaching.
The model of OBTL we are dealing with here is called
“constructive alignment“, first described in Biggs (1996) and
later elaborated with details for implementation, with examples,
in Biggs and Tang (2007). Constructive alignment goes further
than specifying the intended learning outcomes; it also specifies
how those outcomes may best be achieved by engaging students
in appropriate learning activities. The “constructive” part is taken
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 3
from the constructivist learning theory that emphasises that learners
construct their knowledge through their own activities; teachers
do not “transmit” knowledge, learners have to learn through their
own activity. The “alignment” part refers to aligning the students’
learning activities and the assessment tasks to the intended outcomes.
The concept of alignment originally arose in the context of criterion-
referenced assessment, which states that assessment should be about
how well the student meets previously stated criteria or standards
of learning. Here we extend the notion of alignment to teaching as
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well. In other words, we don’t just “teach”, with lecturing as the

default, but we design activities for our students that will help them
to achieve the intended outcomes more effectively.
These ideas are captured by Thomas Shuell (1986), who
summarized teaching as follows:

If students are to learn desired outcomes in a reasonably

effective manner, then the teacher’s fundamental task is
to get students to engage in learning activities that are
likely to result in their achieving those outcomes. …
It is helpful to remember that what the student does is
actually more important in determining what is learned
than what the teacher does. (p. 429)

This statement seems so obvious, but hidden inside there is a widely

applicable three-stage model of outcomes-based teaching and
learning:

1. Define what students are supposed to do as a result of having

been taught a topic; these are the intended learning outcomes
2. Engage them in learning activities that are most likely to help
them achieve those outcomes.
3. Assess to see how well they have achieved the intended
outcomes.

Constructive alignment fills in those details. We shall summarise the

main stages.

Defining the Intended Learning Outcomes

The intended learning outcomes (ILOs) are based on the assumption

that when students “really” understand something they see those
aspects of the world to which the topic applies differently, and
 4 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

therefore they behave differently towards it in “performances of

understanding”, as Gardner (1993) puts it. For example, even a
subject like history is not just about learning narratives about the
past and testing to see how well students have understood them.
That is an important first step, but what we should really want is
to see how students can use that knowledge to see how they may
interpret the present more effectively, and to plan for the future
without repeating past mistakes.
The challenge for teachers in any subject is thus to decide
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in what ways they want their students to transform their topic

knowledge into appropriate action. Examples would be: solving
problems in a given area, making and testing hypotheses, analyzing
complex data, and so on. Each topic taught has its own performances
of understanding. As teachers, we need to be clear about what these
performances are for the content we teach.
Accordingly, the intended learning outcomes need to be
formulated so that they include not only the content that students are
intended to learn, but what they are supposed to do with the content,
and to what level. In writing the intended learning outcome then, we
need to specify what it is the student has to do by specifying a verb,
such as “explain” or “apply”, and the content and context in which
the student has to do it.
We have been talking so far about intended learning
outcomes. However, we must allow for desirable but unintended
learning outcomes, for these can be as important, and sometimes
more important, than those outcomes that are intended. If Alexander
Fleming had only restricted himself to his intended outcomes he
would not have discovered penicillin. Accordingly, some at least of
our assessment tasks should allow students to display performances
of understanding that they might consider relevant but that we hadn’t
thought of.

The Nature of Understanding

All teachers would say that they “teach for understanding” but that
could mean a whole range of levels of understanding. We need to
be rather more precise about what level of understanding we intend
to achieve in our learning outcomes, and to do this we can use the
SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982).
SOLO is an acronym for “Structure of Observed Learning
Outcome” and it refers to the fact that when something is learned it
grows in complexity:
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 5
1. One or a few aspects of the task are learned (unistructural);
2. More and more aspects are acquired but they are not inter-
related or integrated (multistructural);
3. The hitherto unrelated aspects of the task become related to
form an integrated whole (relational);
4. The integrated whole is generalised to new, untaught and
more abstract domains (extended abstract).

These stages occur when a person first approaches a learning task;

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learning to use a new digital camera, say. The manual usually

advises the beginner to set the camera on “auto” and use it as
point-and-shoot only. Then, as need and confidence rise, more and
more operations are acquired (multistructural) but genuine mastery
of the camera is not acquired until the settings are coordinated
(ISO, shutter speed, aperture, light setting, etc.) to suit a particular
shot – this is the relational level of photographic skills. Extended
abstract operations would go beyond the manual, leaving it to the
photographer’s creativity to produce genuinely original results.
SOLO can be used at all phases of teaching: for defining
the intended outcomes of teaching a topic or course in either
quantitative or qualitative terms, for designing the teaching and
learning activities appropriate for achieving those outcomes, and for
assessing how well the student has learned what is intended to be
learned. It is particularly useful in constructive alignment to decide
on the level of complexity of the learning verb(s) to be written in the
intended learning outcomes, and to judge the quality of unintended
outcomes should they arise. Here are some typical learning verbs at
various SOLO levels:

Table 1

Some Learning Verbs at Various SOLO Levels

Unistructural memorize, identify, recognize, count, define,

draw, find, label, match, name, quote, recall,
recite, order, tell, write, imitate

Multistructural classify, describe, list, report, discuss, illustrate,

select, narrate, compute, sequence, outline,
separate
(continued)
 6 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

Relational apply, integrate, analyse, explain, predict,

conclude, summarize (précis), review, argue,
transfer, make a plan, characterize, compare,
contrast, differentiate, organize, debate, make
a case, construct, review and rewrite, examine,
translate, paraphrase, solve a problem

Extended abstract theorize, hypothesize, generalize, reflect, generate,

create, compose, invent, originate, prove from
first principle, make an original case, solve
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from first principle

Each such verb addresses a different level of understanding

“performatively”, as Gardner put it. The learning outcomes are
defined qualitatively in terms of lower or higher cognitive learning
activities that can drive decision-making. Commonly used verbs
such as “understand”, “comprehend” or “appreciate” do not
nominate a particular or operational target to achieve: you can say
you can “understand” something at all SOLO levels.

For example, suppose that an intended learning outcome (ILO) in

a course on psychology for teachers is stated as: “The student will
understand expectancy-value motivation theory”. Does this mean
that the student is able to:

1. Write a text-book definition of the expectancy-value theory?

2. Explain how it works in the student’s own words?
3. Watch a video of a teacher-student interaction and be able to
predict what is likely to happen to the student’s motivation
afterwards?
4. Reflect on the student’s own teaching to illustrate that a
problem that had occurred could be accounted for and rectified
by applying the expectancy-value theory?

All the above are examples of “understanding” at some level

or other. Clearly, we need to pin down the level of understanding
we want when stating the ILO. A recent adaptation of the Bloom
taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) also provides hierarchies
of verbs that can be used to address various levels of understanding
and teachers may find both the SOLO and Bloom provide useful
prompts for selecting verbs when writing outcome statements.
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 7
Table 2

Some ILO Verbs from Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

Remembering define, describe, draw, find, identify, label, list, match,

name, quote, recall, recite, tell, write

Understanding classify, compare, exemplify, conclude, demonstrate,

discuss, explain, identify, illustrate, interpret,
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paraphrase, predict, report.

Applying apply, change, choose, compute, dramatize,

implement, interview, prepare, produce, role-play,
select, show, transfer, use

Analysing analyze, characterize, classify, compare, contrast,

debate, deconstruct, deduce, differentiate, discriminate,
distinguish, examine, outline, relate, research,
separate organize, structure

Evaluating appraise, argue, assess, choose, conclude, criticize,

decide, evaluate, judge, justify, predict, prioritize,
prove, rank, rate, select, monitor

Creating construct, design, generate, hypothesise, invent, plan,

produce, compose, create, invent, make, perform,
plan, produce, design, develop,

Source. Anderson and Krathwohl (2001).

Although the original Bloom Taxonomy was not based on research

on student learning itself, as was SOLO, but on the judgments of
educational administrators, it can nevertheless be a useful adjunct
for suggesting verbs for a range of learning activities.
In writing outcome statements, it is important to distinguish
between the kinds of knowledge to be addressed:

1. Declarative knowledge, which is knowledge about the

discipline or topic. Typical verbs: “classify”, “explain”,
“compare and contrast”.
2. Functioning knowledge, which is knowledge that drives
decision-making and informs action. Typical verbs: “apply,
“solve”, “design”, “reflect”.
 8 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

Whereas declarative knowledge is second hand to the learner,

functioning knowledge is based on, and acquired through, personal
experience. Today, when vocational and professional education
play a larger part than hitherto in higher education, the ultimate
intended outcomes are that students will be practitioners, carrying
out procedures and making decisions as to the conditions under
which alternative courses of action may be made. Despite that,
however, much university teaching is concerned predominantly
with declarative knowledge, whereas especially in professional
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education, knowledge needs to directly inform action as functioning

knowledge. Educational psychology is taught in order to help future
teachers make more informed and better decisions, not to enable
them to write essays or exam questions about the psychology they
had learned. The use of verbs, such as apply, reflect, design and so
on, help avoid too strong an emphasis on declarative knowledge.
Certainly a base of declarative knowledge of psychology is essential,
but it should not be the only sort of knowledge that is fostered and
assessed. In writing ILOs for a course, then, it is important to see
that the appropriate kind of knowledge is addressed.
One objection to outcomes-based education is that describing
and teaching to sets of outcomes is too restrictive (Jervis & Jervis,
2005). This may be the case when the outcomes are low level, as
in competency-based education as used in vocational training, but
where verbs such as hypothesize, create, design, or reflect are used,
the outcomes are open-ended. They positively challenge students to
be creative, rather than “spell the death of originality and serendipity”
as Jervis and Jervis somewhat carelessly accused constructive
alignment of doing. The fact that we allow for unintended outcomes
is the very opposite of restrictive teaching.

Choosing Teaching/Learning Activities

The teaching/learning activities (TLAs) focus on activating the verbs

in the intended learning outcome statements. It is evident that the
most efficient way the student can achieve the outcomes is to enact
the same verbs that the outcomes themselves require. One learns to
drive a car by driving, not by listening to lectures on driving.
If the intended outcome statement refers to explaining a
concept, say, the appropriate learning activity is to require the
students to explain the concept; they shouldn’t be taking notes while
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 9
a teacher does the explaining. Students could do their explaining in
pairs, even in large classes, each assessing the other’s explanation
using rubrics for assessing the explanations; the students thus do the
explaining, and receive immediate feedback on how well they do it
through peer-assessment. In this way they learn how to make a good
explanation as well as reinforce the content of what it is that is being
explained (generic rubrics for assessing quality of explanation are
given in Table 3) .
TLAs addressing complex outcomes may need supplementary,
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or enabling, TLAs. For example, a task may be broken into

component parts in order to practise an aspect of the task that is
currently weak. If the intended outcome is that students solve
clinical problems, it may be necessary for students to first acquire
relevant background knowledge or skills before tackling the main
task of problem-solving.
A problem is that the large rooms in which teaching takes
place are called “lecture theatres”, which strongly implies that the
teaching to take place there is by teachers talking and students
listening and taking notes. However, a lot of different TLAs can
take place in even large classes – the “explain” example using
peer teaching and peer assessment is an example. There is also
the assumption that teaching, and therefore learning, can only take
place in the classroom, which rules out a lot of TLAs; often the
most important ones for functioning knowledge and higher order
ILOs. In professional education, the richest learning contexts will
be the workplace, not the classroom. The most important learning
of all – lifelong learning – is by definition learning that takes place
outside the classroom without any teacher at all and for that ILO
to be achieved the learner must experience independent learning
situations.

Designing Assessment Tasks and Grading Procedures

The assessment tasks likewise address the same verbs as are stated in
the intended outcomes. When the assessment task is the TLA itself,
alignment is perfect. If the verb is explain, the assessment is in terms
of how well the explanation is carried out. In the explain example,
for instance, the students learned how to explain the topic content
by using peer-teaching and peer-assessment; the teacher could
then use the same rubrics to assess the students summatively as the
 10 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

students used formatively. The rubrics would allow assessment at

different grade levels (A, B, C, D), or even for awarding quantitative
percentage “marks”. Table 3 gives rubrics for assessing the verb
“explain” in four levels of quality, which as may be seen, have been
designed with SOLO in mind. However, the levels can be converted
into a quantitative scale for ease of combining assessment results, as
suggested in the second row of the table.
As the intended outcomes are stated in qualitative terms, the
most appropriate form of assessment is also qualitative, where the
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task is assessed as a whole, not analytically. A common way of

assessing is analytically, that is by awarding marks for this aspect
and for that aspect of the assessment task. The effect is that a student
could fail a section of the task but still average enough marks to
pass. Analytic assessment is helpful to give formative feedback on
aspects of the total performance that might need strengthening, but
summative assessment needs to be in terms of the total performance,
requiring judgement of a student’s performance on an assessment
task against assessment criteria or rubrics (Taylor, 1994).
Timed examinations, multiple-choice tests and other closed
methods of assessment, as are traditionally used, can serve for
assessing “basics”, but some assessment tasks need also to allow for
unintended or unforeseen but desirable outcomes. Trying to find out
what students have learned by asking only closed questions is like
fishing with a large meshed net and then concluding that smaller fish
do not exist because you haven’t caught any.
High level verbs in the ILO, such as hypothesize, reflect,
solve unseen problems, create, leave the outcome quite open, so the
assessment task needs to allow for the unexpected. Assessment by
portfolio requires students to place samples of the performances that
they think are evidence that they are achieving the intended learning
outcomes of the course, together with their rationale for why they
think they do, thus allowing assessment of high level verbs including
reflective self-assessment.

Generic Learning Outcomes

The Ministry of Higher Education requires programmes to address

nine generic learning outcomes, including, apart from knowledge
and skills, lifelong learning, communication skills, critical thinking
and problem-solving, amongst others. OBTL is a useful structural
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 11
device for seeing that these are appropriately built into programmes
and courses, and to address them. For example, lifelong learning
essentially means that students are to learn to take control over
their own learning after they have left formal education. Teaching
should encourage this by making sure the students can teach and
assess themselves; that they understand the learning outcomes
with sufficient clarity that they can make them their academic
destination; that students use the teaching/learning activities, and
other learning activities of their own creation, as their means of
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getting there; and obtain feedback from self-assessment as their road

map. An important outcome that addresses lifelong learning is thus
that students monitor their own learning and become self-sufficient
in learning after the institutional structures for supporting learning
have been outgrown and removed.
Although learning outcomes are expressed generically, then,
to be usable they need to be linked to outcomes at the programme
level. The course-intended learning outcomes then address the
programme-intended outcomes as appropriate to the course content.
In this way, there is alignment between courses and programmes,
and between programmes and the institution’s chosen set of
generic learning outcomes, which makes – or should make – the
whole institution an integrated working system. In that case, the
same arguments about reflective practice at the teacher level apply
to the institution, with policies and a culture that support teaching
(Biggs, 2001). For example, a requirement that grades follow a pre-
determined distribution simply means that constructive alignment,
or any form of criterion referencing, cannot work.
Effective teaching needs continually to adapt to changing
circumstances by means of reflective practice (Schon, 1983).
Reflective practice involves monitoring one’s performance to spot
problems and to apply theory in order to generate solutions. Reflective
practice is especially important in implementing constructive
alignment because, as a total system, changes in one component
will require adjustments throughout the system. One needs to be on
the continuing alert for rethinking outcome statements if things do
not go as hoped for, for adjusting teaching/learning activities and
assessment tasks and/or their rubrics. Ideally, constructive alignment
should be implemented in an action research framework to ensure
quality enhancement of teaching and learning (Biggs & Tang, 2007;
pp. 249-251).
 12 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

THE “QUALITY TEACHING FOR LEARNING”

PROGRAMME TO TRAIN-THE-TRAINERS

We have had experience before with implementing constructive

alignment (CA) on a classroom-wide basis and on an institution-wide
basis. Working at the institutional levels is much more challenging
because we are dealing with hundreds of courses and teachers. But
here in Malaysia, we are looking at implementation on a nation-
wide basis – a daunting prospect indeed. AKEPT are handling this
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onerous task with the idea of “Train-the-Trainers”, that is, training

first those who in turn will train the actual teachers. The programme
we conducted on February 23-5, 2010, was thus for staff developers
who would then go back to their institutions and train their own
staff. This concept has considerable advantages:

1. We had 140 at our workshop with sometimes 4 or 5 from

the same institution, which meant that a capable team would
be equipped for training a whole institution. This means that
this three-day programme alone would result in around 30
institutions implementing constructively aligned OBTL.
2. We were dealing with experienced staff developers, making
our task much easier than if we were dealing directly with
teachers.
3. The teachers would be trained in their own institutions by their
staff developers. Some teachers resent it if outsiders come to
their institution to tell them how to teach, as if what they are
doing is wrong and it needs outsiders to set them straight. This
is not the case at all of course, but that can be a perception,
which is less likely in the Train-the-Trainers scenario.

In consultation with AKEPT, we designed a two and a half day

programme with the following intended outcomes:

1. The trainers need to understand constructive alignment to the

point where they can apply the principles in the intended way.
We sent out pre-reading material explaining the concept of
constructive alignment. The first morning of the programme
was a seminar on the key points of constructive alignment
followed by discussion. The idea of this was to provide the
trainers with an experience, learning about CA, that they
would be creating back in their own institutions. On the first
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 13
day of the programme, we found that many people seemed
uneasy. We only found out why on the last day, as discussed
below.
2. The trainers need to identify factors affecting implementation
on an institutional level. It is one thing for teachers to be
clear about CA for themselves, but they will be operating
in institutions with traditions, practices, and personnel
procedures that have a bearing on how effectively CA can be
implemented. For example, CA can’t work if norm-referenced
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assessment is required, while staff assessment for promotion

using teacher-feedback questionnaires that focus on clarity
of lecturing strongly discourages teachers from using more
effective TLAs. A seminar on these issues was held in the
afternoon of the first day.
3. The trainers need to learn to write Intended Learning
Outcomes (ILOs), design Teaching/Learning Activities
(TLAs) and Assessment Tasks (ATs) for themselves, before
they can teach others. The second day comprised a 6-hour
workshop with activities designed to address the required
application needed for the three areas of writing ILOs, and
designing TLAs and ATs.
4. The trainers need to design staff development programmes
for their own institutions. Once they are able to write ILOs,
and design teaching/learning activities and assessment tasks,
the trainers need to develop staff development programmes
for their own staff and work out strategies of implementation
such that teachers and departments can become self-sufficient
in implementing CA in their own courses and programmes.
This was the major intended outcome of the programme: that
all trainers design their own staff development programmes
for use in their own institutions. Where possible, trainers were
grouped in teams from the same institution in a three- hour
workshop on the morning of day three.
5. The trainers need to maintain a portfolio of items in order
to provide formative assessment on the effectiveness of the
staff development programme, and to provide a structure
for continuing monitoring the implementation of OBTL in
their own institutions. The aims of the portfolio were to help
participants reflect on their effectiveness as trainers and staff
developers in implementing constructive alignment in their
own institutions, to keep track of the on-going progress of the
staff development programme and to identify areas for further
 14 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

improvement of the implementation of OBTL, and to provide

feedback to the AKEPT Centre for Learning and Teaching so
that further support may be provided to the trainers. Items to
be included in the portfolio were suggested along with peer
assessment by colleagues in the same institution.
6. The trainers and senior administrators need to review
institutional policies so they are compatible with constructive
alignment. Some policies, such as grading on the curve,
prevent implementation of constructive alignment. Quality
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enhancement procedures, such as reflective practice and

action research, are to be encouraged.

All these activities were successfully implemented, except the last

which was left to individuals in their own institutions.
The main outcome of the Train-the-Trainer programme was
(4) above: staff developers developing programmes they would
implement in their own institutions. We were very impressed with
the results. However, it was at this session that some difficulties that
had been worrying many of the trainers earlier came to light and
were clarified.

SOME ISSUES THAT NEED TO BE CLARIFIED

A Topic-Based Curriculum

Some participants started with the topics to be taught and then

converted them into outcomes. In delivering a course, there might be
say 10 topics to be taught but in writing several outcomes for each
topic, a massive set of 30 or more outcomes would be created, which
is unmanageable; you can’t align TLAs and ATs to 30 outcomes!
In our experience, a semester–long course would realistically have
about 5 or 6 outcomes, no more.
There might well be 10 topics in the curriculum for a course,
but ILOs can be so designed that group topics are addressed by one
ILO. For example here are the ILOs for the course “Engineering
Principles and Design” (see Biggs and Tang, 2007, pp. 295-299 also
gives the TLAs and ATs for the course).

“Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able

to:
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 15
ILO1. Apply the principles of mechanical kinetics to single degree
of freedom vibration systems.
ILO2. Outline the fundamental theory of friction and wear and its
applications in engineering.
ILO3. Describe the basic theories of fluid mechanics and heat
transfer.
ILO4. Apply the basic engineering mechanics principles to the
design and implementation of a simple engineering system
(such as a projectile machine) and the evaluation of its
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performance.
ILO5. Work effectively as a team member in a small-scale
engineering project.”

Thus, ILOs are more like the sub-themes of a course, each

of which could be applicable to several topics. In the example here,
there is a good mix of declarative and functioning knowledge ILOs
and each would be relevant to more than one, and sometimes several,
topics.

Effects of the Bloom Taxonomy

The Ministry has recommended that all programme outcomes must

be balanced in terms of the three domains addressed in Bloom’s
taxonomy of educational objectives: the cognitive domain (Bloom,
1956), the affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia, 1973),
and the psychomotor domain (unfinished by Bloom but see Simpson,
1972). Somewhere along the line the misunderstanding seems to
have arisen that a course must address all three domains. However,
the affective domain and/or the psychomotor domains may not be
applicable to all courses and to include them not only multiplies
the number of outcomes unnecessarily, but they are irrelevant to
the course. At the programme and graduate outcome level all three
domains may be relevant, and it is useful to have Bloom remind
us to think about this possibility, but they certainly should not be
prescribed in fixed proportions. The proportion of different kinds
of outcome domain should not be ordained before designing ILOs,
although bearing these different domains in mind can be a useful
reminder that they might need to be taken into account – but only if
course and programme designers think that they are relevant.
We understand that the official Ministry’s position is that
the three domains, cognitive, affective and psychomotor, should be
addressed in the nine HEI learning outcomes and that the learning
 16 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

outcomes are addressed in a programme, but not in each course.

However, some teachers told us that courses had been rejected by
the course approving body because they didn’t address all three
domains. There is clearly a disconnect here, but it is not up to us to
say where the problem lies – we only know that the problem exists.
Another use of Bloom is in the latest version (Anderson and
Krathwohl 2001), which as we have seen in Table 2 is useful for
providing a range of possible verbs for writing ILOs.
http://mjli.uum.edu.my

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

We have described here a programme, “Quality Teaching for

Learning”, that was the first to address the Ministry of Higher
Education’s initiative to implement outcomes-based teaching and
learning (OBTL) in Malaysian higher education institutions. The
structure used was that of Train-the-Trainers, a cost-effective way
of reaching out to Malaysia’s numerous institutions, the model for
OBTL being that of constructive alignment.
Constructive alignment makes explicit not only the content
topic but what the student is expected to do with that content in
the form of intended learning outcomes, and engages students by
designing teaching/learning activities that are likely to encourage the
cognitive processes needed to achieve those outcomes. Statements
of outcomes contain a verb or verbs, such as apply, reflect, explain,
and so on, that articulate clearly what level of understanding is
intended for the students in the course in question, and the learning
activity required to best achieve the intended outcomes. The teaching
context is designed precisely to require the students to enact those
verbs, and the assessment tasks to allow teachers and students to
see how well the intended outcomes – and desirable if unintended
outcomes – have been achieved.
The “Quality Teaching for Learning” Programme for
training the trainers was designed to achieve the following intended
outcomes:

 The trainers need to understand constructive alignment to the

point where they can apply the principles in the intended way.
 The trainers need to identify factors affecting implementation
on an institutional level.
 The trainers need to learn to write Intended Learning
Outcomes (ILOs), design Teaching/Learning Activities
 Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19 17
(TLAs) and Assessment Tasks (ATs) for themselves, before
they can teach others.
 The trainers need to design a staff development programme
for their own institutions.
 The trainers need to maintain a portfolio of items in order
to provide formative assessment on the effectiveness of the
staff development programme, and to provide a structure for
continuing monitoring the implementation of OBTL in their
own institutions.
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 The trainers and senior administrators need to review

institutional policies so that they are compatible with
constructive alignment.

In the course of the workshop some misconceptions were

uncovered, including the need to think of the curriculum as outcomes-
based rather than topic-based, and to avoid any stipulation at the
course level that all of the cognitive, affective and psychomotor
domains of Bloom’s taxonomy have to be addressed.
However, we must say that the programme has been successful
in achieving the intended outcomes, and we are honoured to be part
of this important initiative.

REFERENCES

Anderson, L.W., & Krathwohl, D.R. (2001). A taxonomy for

learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s
taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Addison
Wesley Longman.
Biggs, J.B. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive
alignment. Higher Education, 32, 1-18.
Biggs, J.B., (2001). The reflective institution: Assuring and
enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. Higher
Education, 14, 221-238.
Biggs, J.B., & Collis, K.F. (1982). Evaluating the quality of
learning: The SOLO taxonomy. New York: Academic Press.
Biggs, J.B., & C. Tang. (2007). Teaching for quality learning at
university. Maidenhead, Berks.: Open University Press/
McGraw Hill Education.
Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). (1956) Taxonomy of educational objectives:
Handbook I, Cognitive domain. New York: Longman.
 18 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 8 (2011): 1-19

Gardner, H.W. (1993, July). Educating for understanding. The

American School Board Journal, 20-24.
Jervis, Loretta M., & Jervis, L. (2005). What is the constructivism
in constructive alignment? http://www.bioscience.heacademy.
ac.uk/journal/vol6/Beej-6-5.aspx
Krathwohl, D. R., Bloom, B. S., & Masia, B. B. (1973). Taxonomy
of educational objectives, the classification of educational
goals. Handbook II: Affective domain. New York: David
McKay.
http://mjli.uum.edu.my

Schon, D.A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals

think in action. London: Temple Smith.
Shuell, T.J. (1986). Cognitive conceptions of learning. Review of
Educational Research, 56, 411-436.
Simpson, E. J. (1972). The classification of educational objectives in
the psychomotor domain. Washington, DC: Gryphon House.
Taylor, C. (1994). Assessment for measurement or standards: The
peril and promise of large scale assessment reform. American
Educational Research Journal, 31, 231-262.
 http://mjli.uum.edu.my
Table 3

Rubrics for the verb “Explain”

Marginal Adequate Good Excellent

Grade D C- C C+ B- B B+ A- A A+

Percent 45 <---------------> 49 50 <--------------------> 64 65 <---------------> 79 80 <-------------> 100

range

Explain Able to identify and briefly Able to identify a number of Able to identify a full range As in ‘Good’ but provides views
write about limited points. relevant points with some of relevant points with details. on possible alternative causes and/
Very little evidence of details. Use these points to Supported by relevant literature. or results depending on changes
using these points to provide a fair reasoning or Points are organized to provide of conditions. Able to link current
provide reasoning to why causality. No evidence of a a comprehensive and cohesive reasoning to situations in real-life
they are inter-related. comprehensive overview reasoning or causality. professional contexts.
of reasoning or causality.

Note: These are generic rubrics that may be modified to suit the explanation of a particular topic or concept.
Train-the-Trainers: Implementing Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning: 1-19
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