Constructive alignment in instructional design

1. Constructivism – the idea that meaning is not passed from the teacher and received by the learner, but is something learners create for themselves out of the actions they take to learn. 
2. Alignment – an instructional design concept that emphasises:
   • defining intended learning outcomes,
   • designing learning activities which encourage those outcomes to be achieved, and
   • designing assessment as a measure of those achievements.

Although these ideas were found in education theory as early as 1946, they were brought together as the principle of constructive alignment by psychologist and educational theorist John Biggs in his paper Enhancing Teaching Through Constructive Alignment in 1996. 

Constructive alignment in instructional design has subsequently been refined by Biggs and others, and widely taken up by western tertiary education institutions. Biggs (2014) noted that university teaching had been largely teacher-centred: “the focus being on what content the teacher has to ‘cover’ . . . lecturing the default method, and assessment is norm-referenced.”

By comparison, the constructive alignment “approach to teaching is learner-centred in that the target is what the learner has to achieve and how the learner may best be engaged in order to achieve it to the required standard. The teaching design is outcomes-based and assessment is necessarily criterion-referenced.” (Biggs, 2014)

References/Further reading

Biggs, John. (1996). Enhancing Teaching Through Constructive Alignment. Higher Education. 32. 347-364. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220017462_Enhancing_Teaching_Through_Constructive_Alignment 

Biggs, John. (2014). Constructive Alignment in University Teaching. Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia Review of Higher Education. 1. 55-22. https://www.herdsa.org.au/herdsa-review-higher-education-vol-1/5-22