ABSTRACT
Aligning teaching and curriculum with learning outcomes is a simple “best practice” in education and fairly easy to monitor and adjust in our courses and our programs. Curriculum in higher education is quite suspect today with evidence and critics arguing that college curriculum is not contributing to the needs of students or society. Criticism of efforts to revitalize curriculum has been intense, with descriptions of curriculum continuing to be disappointing, insufficient, inadequate, and incoherent. Quality curriculum is at the heart of learner-centered education, and alignment studies promote both planning and reviewing of syllabi and program descriptions for the quality of coherence. Alignment grids may also be used for nonacademic programs such as residential life or first-year experience programs.
