Outcomes at the level claimed

The most common substantive fault in course documentation.

Qualifications sit at defined levels with published descriptors, and the learning outcomes of a course must sit at the level claimed. Documentation frequently describes a qualification at one level using outcomes appropriate to a lower one, particularly around independence, complexity and the handling of ambiguity.

The check is mechanical and tedious: put the level descriptor beside the outcomes and compare, line by line. It is the single most productive hour available in reviewing a course document and it is skipped almost universally.

The recurring shortfall is at the top end. Outcomes describing application of established techniques are appropriate lower down; the higher levels expect judgement in unfamiliar situations, and outcomes that never require it are describing a lower qualification.

The assessment must then examine what the outcomes claim. An outcome about exercising judgement assessed by a task with one correct answer has not been assessed, and that mismatch is visible to anybody reading both documents together.

Where a course genuinely operates at a lower level than claimed, the honest options are to strengthen it or to claim the level it actually is. Neither is comfortable and both are better than a mismatch that will be found.

There is a further check worth running on outcomes, which is whether they distinguish the qualification from the one below it. Reading the outcomes of two adjacent levels side by side exposes the common case where the higher set is the lower set with additional adverbs, which is not a level difference and will be read as one.