Abstracts Category : Other

Analyzing KTH's course syllabuses from a pedagogical perspective

by Joakim Lindberg

Course syllabuses are used by students and teachers in various pedagogical situations, which makes it important that the syllabuses are well-designed from a pedagogical perspective. It is therefore useful to classify the syllabuses and identify areas in need of improvement. However, due to the large number of syllabuses it is infeasible to perform the classification manually. The objective of this thesis is to analyze all current syllabuses at KTH according to how pedagogically useful they are. The analysis is enabled by defining what pedagogically useful means and by implementing a program which uses the definition to classify the syllabuses automatically. The results show that syllabuses fulfill most specifications to a rather high degree, but there is room for improvement in the intended learning outcomes by increasing the usage of constructive alignment and verbs belonging to the higher classes of Blooms taxonomy. The results also show that there are correlations of varying strength between how well the specifications are fulfilled and which school the course is given by, the cycle of the course and the number of credits. A remarkable result is that not all syllabuses comply with Swedish laws. Kursplaner anvnds av studenter och lrare i olika pedagogiska situationer, vilket gr det viktigt att kursplanerna r vlutformade ur ett pedagogiskt perspektiv. Det r sledes anvndbart att klassificera kursplanerna och identifiera omrden i behov av frbttring. P grund av det stora antalet kursplaner r det dock praktiskt omjligt att utfra klassificeringen manuellt. Mlet med detta examensarbete r att analysera alla aktuella kursplaner vid KTH utifrn hur pedagogiskt anvndbara de r. Analysen mjliggrs genom att definiera vad pedagogiskt anvndbar innebr och genom att implementera ett program som anvnder definitionen fr att klassificera kursplanerna automatiskt. Resultaten visar att kursplanerna uppfyller de flesta specifikationerna till en ganska hg grad, men det finns frbttringsmjligheter i lrandemlen genom att ka anvndningen av konstruktiv lnkning och verb tillhrande de hgre klasserna i Blooms taxonomi. Resultaten visar ocks att det finns korrelationer av varierande styrka mellan hur vl specifikationerna uppfylls och vilken skola som ger kursen, kursens niv och antalet hgskolepong. Ett anmrkningsvrt resultat r att inte alla kursplaner fljer svenska lagar.