Finding your feet in the dark: how making teaching and learning visible enables change in course and assessment design

When higher education instructors introduce changes in teaching and assessment strategies to meet either personal or institutional goals, they often navigate practical and political challenges alone. This study investigates the perspectives of Norwegian university instructors in their effort to replace lectures and exams with a series of problem-solving activities and assessment for learning strategies in an undergraduate science course. Using grounded theory, we analysed 11 interviews with 7 instructional staff involved in two offerings of the course. Our findings show how instructors took specific measures to bridge gaps in expectations about learning with students and to address misconceptions, teaching conventions, and bureaucratic barriers that hinder the development of more meaningful learning and assessment experiences. Instructors found some success in making teaching and learning visible to students. However, they did not have similarly effective strategies for making their teaching practices clear to peers (academic and professional staff). We argue that these processes of making teaching and learning visible, as well as intelligible within institutions, is a crucial part of course design and warrants inclusion in institutional curriculum guidelines. We discuss the need for structural change in how educational reforms are enacted so lasting cultural changes can be achieved.