An Outcome-based Instructional Design Within the Framework of Taxonomy

Abstract

Instruction is the behaviour with purposes and reasons. The objectives in instruction are the expectations of learners’ learning results, which expresses the purposes. When the objectives, teaching activities and assessment in instruction are designed based on learning outcomes, educators are able to prove by this assessment that what they educate is exactly what learners should learn, which expresses the reasons. Being aimed at the contradiction between more teaching contents and less class hours in specialized courses at present, in this article are researched the method of designing teaching activities on the premise of ensuring instruction quality, and the method of assessing learners’ learning outcomes which is able to reflect instruction effectiveness. Within the framework of objectives taxonomy constructed by the two attributes of knowledge and cognitive processes, taking the course of Power System Analysis in polytechnic universities as an example, in this article an instructional design which reflects the purposes and reasons of instruction is presented in the form of instruction cases, and the rationality of the design of the objectives, teaching activities and assessment is analyzed, researched and improved, and also is the consistency between the three of them. This instructional design has been applied to the undergraduate instruction in the specialized subject of electrical engineering and automation at Liaoning Technical University, from which hundreds of students in multiple grades are benefited. These instructing practices illustrate that with its application the engagement and activity of students in class activities are all improved significantly, such negative situations as the scope delineation by pestering educators and the cramming of students for final examinations are reduced. And also, the improvement of instruction quality is accordingly promoted to some extent. Consequently, the outcome-oriented instructive design within the framework of objectives taxonomy has been proved to be scientific and innovative, and it can be highly spread and applied to other educational practices.