Outcome-based Learning Research Articles

Core Competencies in Food Science: Background Information on the Development of the IFT Education Standards

ABSTRACT: In recent years, many professional organizations have shifted their program standards and program review away from course content‐based criteria and towards outcome‐based learning measures. IFT has recently done the same with implementation of the new IFT Education Standards. These Standards, which replace the old “Minimum Standards for Food Science Programs”, were approved by the Executive Committee at their meeting in June, 2001, with implementation beginning in fall, 2001. All food science programs will now be reviewed for IFT approval against these new Standards. This article describes the process by which this change has occurred over the past few years.

Learning from demonstrations: the role of visual search during observational learning from video and point-light models

In this study, we examined the visual search strategies used during observation of video and point-light display models. We also assessed the relative effectiveness of video and point-light models in facilitating the learning of task outcomes and movement patterns. Twenty-one female novice soccer players were divided equally into video, point-light display and no-model (control) groups. Participants chipped a soccer ball onto a target area from which radial and variable error scores were taken. Kinematic data were also recorded using an opto-electrical system. Both a pre- and post-test were performed, interspersed with three periods of acquisition and observation of the model. A retention test was completed 2 days after the post-test. There was a significant main effect for test period for outcome accuracy and variability, but observation of a model did not facilitate outcome-based learning. Participants observing the models acquired a global movement pattern that was closer to that of the model than the controls, although they did not acquire the local relations in the movement pattern, evidenced by joint range of motion and angle-angle plots. There were no significant differences in learning between the pointlight display and video groups. The point-light display model group used a more selective visual search pattern than the video model group, while both groups became more selective with successive trials and observation periods. The results are discussed in the context of Newell's hierarchy of coordination and control and Scully and Newell's visual perception perspective.

Limited Vision: The Ontario Curriculum and Outcomes-Based Learning

Outcomes-based learning, as described in recent policy documents in Ontario, offers a narrow, controlling vision of teachers and learners, and of diversity and ecology. Although the documents profess an integrative vision, they provide lists of expectations that students are required to reach. In this article we criticize these documents for their failure to acknowledge the experiences of either learners or teachers, for superficial treatment of diversity and ecology, and for an internal contradiction that imposes a rigid, lock-step system upon an integrative vision of teaching and learning. Their attempt to describe education using the metaphor of lists, as in lists of parts to be assembled in a machine, is outdated. We suggest other metaphors a spiral, coil, or mobius strip and discuss one example, the early childhood schools from the municipality of Reggio Emilia, Italy, to illustrate these more complex metaphors.