Take Advantage of Dr. Spady’s Unique Perspectives, Astute Wisdom, and Compelling Models
Expand Your Knowledge and Applied Competence
Use the Course as Essential Learning in All:
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Leadership Development Programs
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Curriculum Design Activities
Assessment and Evaluation Designs
The Course’s initial Modules definitively describe what Outcome-Based Education is, isn’t, means, and implies; and they highlight several examples of Outcome-Based learning models that societies rely on daily to survive and thrive.Here Dr. Spady ex- plains how and why so many educational approaches are mistakenly called ‘OBE’; de- scribes how OBE departs dramatically from, changes, and improves ‘modern’ educa- tion; and suggests how educators can adopt and apply an OBE orientation to every- thing they do and assess. These modules emphasize how the birth, infancy, and early stages of the OBE movement emanated from the pioneering theoretical and applied work of Professors
John Carroll and Benjamin Bloom in the 1960’s, how they both challenged deeply entrenched, disempowering features of conventional education, how their work was translated into OBE’s defining philosophy, operational principles, and classroom practices that yielded major improvements in key aspects of curriculum design, in- struction and assessment. Those improvements expanded what are called the ‘conditions of success’, which, in turn, elevated student learning success dramati- cally.
These Modules explain the many ways that OBE’s fundamentals transformed standard practices in schools, both before and after inherent limitations in Bloom’s model were discovered in 1986, when the term ‘Outcomes’ was given a short and precise definition rocked the educational improvement world. This dramatic breakthrough unleashed both a revolution in conventional thinking and an ongoing evolution of models and practices that continue to this day. Here Dr. Spady documents the many key implications of that definition and explains how it rapidly exposed education’s many limited and limiting conventional ideas and practices concerning curriculum, instruction, learning, assessment, and opportunity. These Modules are profoundly important in:
1) Shaping how authentic OBE implementation can and should unfold;
2) revealing how learning can be deepened and made to last beyond the short-term ‘event’ of any individual course or grade level;
3) describing what ‘effectiveness’ and ‘signifi- cance’ really mean;
4) opening the door to, and explaining the elements and di- mensions of complex learning – the learning that translates directly into effective role performance in all aspects of life;
5) laying the groundwork for authentically fu- ture-focused Outcome frameworks and learning models; and
6) giving birth to the term “Transformational” as applied to learning, learners, and educational change.