Institutions can demonstrate that their programs and curriculums are effective with goal alignment to course content and activities. The process consists of three steps:
- Your institution turns on the goals tool and imports or creates goals. Instructors can't create goals.
- Instructors align course content to one or multiple goals. In the Original Course View, content types include discussion forums and threads, blogs, journals, tests and individual questions, assignments, and Grade Center columns.
- In the Original Course View, instructors and administrators run course reports to examine how course content matches up with the institution's goals and how students perform against goals.
Goals for K-12 schools
For K-12 schools in the United States, administrators can import learning goals from the 50 states and Washington, D.C. You can align course content to these goals and run course reports. The reports show where the course content doesn't cover the goals so you can make adjustments to the curriculum.
Goals for institutions with outcomes assessment
Institutions that have access to the outcomes assessment features can use goals on an even broader level. Institutions can collect evidence of student performance toward goals. For example, institutions can collect evidence from courses to support accreditation activities and assess the success of a program. Institutions can also find areas where a program needs to improve.
Watch a video about how to align content to goals
The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.
Video: How to Align Content to Goals shows you how to align course content to one or multiple goals.
Align content to goals
After administrators create goals, you can align content to goals. You can also align an entire container, such as a folder or lesson plan, or one or more content items.
If enabled, be sure to disable the pop-up blocker for Blackboard Learn so you can access the Discover Goals window.
- From an item's menu, select Add Alignments. The Discover Goals window appears.
- In the Browse Criteria panel, expand the criteria sections and select specific criteria:
- Source: Only one source can appear at a time. Shows where the goal is stored.
- Goal Set Type
- Goal Set: The branch of learning or subject of the goal.
- Category
- Goals Type: The classification of the goal, such as Standard.
Or, use the Search current results box to type a phrase, word, or part of a word to find matching goals.
- Goals that fit the criteria appear. Select the check boxes for the goals you want to add. The goals appear in the Selected Goals area at the bottom of the screen. You can expand the area to view your list of goals. Select the red X next to a goal to remove it. The goal is removed from the collection, but not deleted from the system.
- Select Submit.
- The selected goals appear with the content item. You can make goals visible to students with the Student Visibility icon. Select the Remove Alignment icon to remove a goal.
About discussion forums and threads
You can align goals to discussion forums and threads. The options are dependent on the grade option you chose when you created the forum.
- No Grading in Forum: Align either forums or threads.
- Grade Forum: Set to forum alignments automatically, and you can't change it. The alignments options are grayed out.
- Grade Threads: Set to thread alignments automatically and you can't change it. The alignments options are grayed out.
Your next step is to access the forum or thread and add alignments.
For threads, the Alignments option appears in the menu at the top of the page when you hover.
For forums, select Alignments at the top of the page and then select Add Alignments.
About blogs, journals, and wikis
Access a blog, journal, or wiki. Expand the instructions, select Alignments, and select Add Alignments.
About the Grade Center
You can align goals to a Grade Center column. Access a column's menu and select View and Add Alignments. In the pop-up window, select Add Alignments.
View a test question's alignment to goals
In the Grade Center, you can view the goals aligned to individual test questions. Access the test column's menu and select Attempts Statistics.
On the Test Statistics page, goals aligned to each test question appear in the Active Goals section.
View reports on goals coverage
Instructors can run two reports about goals in a single course. On the Control Panel, expand the Evaluation section and select Course Reports.
- The Course Coverage Report presents data on how a course's content covers goals and where gaps exist.
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The Course Performance Report allows you to set acceptable performance target values and ranges for goals. The report shows how students' work that is aligned to those goals measures up to the target value.
Administrators can run reports on goal coverage across all courses in the system.
Goals report data is automatically refreshed every 20 minutes. Your institution can refresh the report data manually if needed.
More on running and saving reports
Watch a video about goals reports
This video explains how to access the goals report, run two reports, and interpret the results.
Video: How to run a goals report
Goals reports data
All goals reports default to HTML and open in a new window. You can drill down into the supporting data. In the Course Coverage Details Report, use these areas to access data.
| Report Area | Supporting Data Report |
|---|---|
| Goals Comparison Bars | |
| Not Used | A list of goals that aren't used |
| Covered | A list of goals that are covered, and aligned content types |
| Not Covered | A list of goals that aren't covered |
| Goals Column Numbers | |
| Not Used | A list of goals that aren't used |
| Covered | A list of goals that are covered, and aligned content types |
| Not Covered | A list of goals that aren't covered |
| Goal Set Name Column | |
| Name of the Goal Set | Goal Set Name Coverage Overview |
| Learning Level Column | |
| Name of the Learning Level | Learning Level Coverage Details |
| Courses Column | |
| Name of the course | Course Coverage Report |
| The name of a goal | Goal Coverage Detail |
