Learning Outcomes
Learning outcomes can be articulated for assignments and activities, for the course overall and at the program, college and even university levels, though they are most common at the course and program level. Writing learning outcomes sometimes means articulating things that you know implicitly but may never have consciously spelled out, even in your own mind.
- What do you really want students to be able to do and know at the end of the assignment, activity or course?
- How will you know if they succeeded in getting there?
Learning outcomes should begin with a verb and should be knowable. “I’ll know it when I see it” isn’t really a good answer. You need to be able to articulate and be explicit about what you want students to achieve in order to help them achieve it. And to assess whether they did.
Writing Learning Outcomes
Learning outcomes need to be clear, observable and measurable and stated in ways that students can understand. Learning outcomes are best measured with the use of a corresponding rubric, which will help students understand what they’re learning and how.
- Begin with an action verb. This verb chart corresponds to the six types of learning outlined in Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy of learning: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create. This excellent collection of verbs includes verbs not just for the cognitive domain, but also for the affective (feeling, valuing) and psychomotor domains.
- Think about how you’ll measure their achievement of whatever that verb represents. “Learn” and “understand” and “appreciate” are hard to measure.
- Write the rest of the statement describing what they’re doing with that verb, e.g., “Describe the historical, cultural and linguistic context of a poem and the author.”
Learning Outcomes and Course Design
Backward design begins with thinking about the course-level learning outcomes. The concept was first promoted by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their book Understanding by Design. They encourage faculty to consider three questions:
- What should students hear, read, view or otherwise encounter? In other words, knowledge they should be familiar with.
- What knowledge and skills should students master? In other words, what is important for them to know and do?
- What big ideas and understandings should students retain? What will they retain long after your course has ended?