Thesis | Abstract | Defence | Data | Paper | Author
In a world where education is ever more in focus, there is a corresponding increase in the focus on whether courses and education actually live up to the the course descriptions.
Quality assurance of education has so far been done through questionnaire surveys where participants are asked to evaluate whether or not they have achieved the desired competencies from the course. It is fair to question, though, whether or not the participants are truly qualified to assess the quality of some course. They may be able to assess their own effort and the learning environment, but it is far more difficult to make the judgement of having achieved the proper competencies or whether critical weak points still exist in the foundation upon which the competencies are based.
In my thesis, I present a model for evaluation of course plans, which can complement the questionnaire surveys on exactly the points where the participants cannot be expected to provide useful and objective criticism. The model is based on constructive alignment, which has become a generally accepted framework for the creation of a good learning environment, and, through analysis of the course plan and the associated materials, the model creates an overview of how well the course plan supports the given intended learning outcomes. The model directly highlights the parts of the course plan, which may be in conflict with the intended learning outcomes - and, unlike the questionnaire surveys, the model can be created even before the course begins.
The master's thesis is titled "Model for Measuring Alignment in University Courses" and was defended at the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, on December 9, 2008. The thesis has been written by yours truly, Anders Westfall Reinholt Petersen, and achieved the mark of 12 at the defence.
Parts of the thesis use data, which for practical reasons were unsuited for inclusion in the written report. These materials are presented here along with an electronic version of the thesis. Unfortunately, the thesis is only available in Danish, but it does feature an English abstract and it has spun off a paper (in English), which has been submitted for the ITiCSE'09 conference on innovations in computer science education.
Finally, there is a short description of the work on the thesis and my dreams for the future.
All documents are made available here for convenient downloading.
PDF-file with the abstract (in English)
PDF-file with the full thesis (in Danish only)
PDF-file with the abstract (in Danish)
Excel workbook for the example in chapters 3-5 (in Danish only)
Excel workbook for the analysis of the course Software Architecture (in Danish only)
