Semantic Mapping of Learning Assets to Align Curriculum and Evidence Learning Effectiveness in Business Education

Ensuring the alignment of course content against desired goals and objectives has always been at the core of effective instructional course design — whether the instruction is delivered face-to-face, or via the support of distance technologies. Nonetheless, with the latter delivery of instruction, two distinct challenges have recently emerged, thus prompting the need to re-examine the term “quality” as it relates to accreditation. The first challenge lies within the ability to locate and/or create and align digital learning objects to course goals and objectives. The second challenge lies within the ability to demonstrate learning effectiveness from learning management system metadata. A research and development team at American Public University System addressed these challenges by employing an open source repository and semantic engine for analysis and alignment of content, materials, and learning activities to goals and objectives across all courses within the School of Business. The result was a highly detailed, accurate mapping of the programs' knowledge base to established goals and objectives. As an added benefit, resources were disaggregated to a very granular level and sorted into taxonomies that can be independently referenced and utilized for cross-curricular consumption