Intended Learning Outcomes: A Process Of Formulating Intended Learning Outcomes At Program Level

Under the goal of the Fundamental and Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education (HE) in Vietnam 2006-2020 that Vietnam has an advanced HE system achieving international standards by 2020, Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has introduced a number of initiatives aiming to meet this increased demand for education. The most recent and important change is, for the first time, MOET’s mandate (MOET 2009) for development and public declaration of intended learning outcomes (ILOs) of every university department program. However, the existing descriptors (Education Law 2005) for formulation of ILOs are only general statements of educational goals, or the guidelines document (MOET 2010) only instructs that ILOs include knowledge, skills, attitude, and lifelong learning skills.

The CDIO Initiative provides an integrated framework consisting of the CDIO Syllabus and the CDIO Standards to identify ILOs of a program, and to construct a sequence of learning experiences to meet those ILOs. Based on the CDIO Standard 2 and the Syllabus v.2 as a proof of concept, this paper proposes to develop a Process of Formulating ILOs at Program Level (PF-ILOs) for various university department programs to formulate their specific ILOs. In particular, we present: (i) use of CDIO Standard 2 and adaptations of the CDIO Syllabus for formulating ILOs at our strategic university departments; (ii) adaptations of the CDIO Syllabus to diverse education programs; (iii) the Program ILOs Syllabus that has been proposed for Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) based on a generalization of the CDIO Syllabus v.2 and student learning outcomes taxonomies; and (iv) use of the pilot implementation of CDIO as a means to develop the PF-ILOs, which can be replicated at other universities within VNU-HCM and throughout Vietnam.

This paper significantly contributes to the extension of CDIO application to a wide range of disciplines in particular, and promotes the PF-ILOs, which permits university department programs to formulate and improve their ILOs.