Return to All Teaching Guides

Why is it important to have “learning outcomes” identified for my course?

Learning outcomes provide transparency for your students and help you to create an aligned course design.

At the most basic level, learning outcomes let the students know why they are taking the course and what they are expected to learn. But learning outcomes are also an important step for an instructor as part of course design, because without clearly defined learning outcomes it is challenging to create a course that has strong and intentional alignment in what the students are learning, practicing, and being assessed on during the quarter.  The practice of developing and utilizing learning outcomes also allows faculty and instructors to evaluate potential strengths and weaknesses of a course – such as recognizing that the learning outcomes you have planned are in fact too rigorous or too basic for your students. Identifying which learning outcomes were achieved or not achieved by your students will provide insight into how you can adjust your teaching each quarter.

Learning outcomes support the intentional development and alignment of learning across multiple courses within a program/major.

At a curricular planning level, developing clear learning outcomes across courses or major pathways provides for a more cohesive experience and ensures that students have equal prerequisite knowledge needed as they move through their undergraduate experience.

It is an accreditation requirement to include learning outcomes in your syllabus.

The WASC Senior College and University Commission outlines in their handbook for accreditation that learning outcomes are included in course syllabi:

Standard 2.4: The institution’s student learning outcomes and standards of performance are developed by faculty and widely shared among faculty, students, staff, and (where appropriate) external stakeholders. The institution’s faculty take collective responsibility for establishing appropriate standards of performance and demonstrating through assessment achievement of these standards.

GUIDELINE: Student learning outcomes are reflected in the course syllabi.

Goal vs outcome – What’s the difference?

These terms are often used interchangeably to mean the same thing. Some describe goals as big-picture, longer-term, and achievable but not necessarily easy to measure (“students will understand the process of photosynthesis”). Outcomes are, by contrast, written in a way that is easy to measure (“students can compare and contrast key differences between two texts”). Learning outcomes are typically the most important things the students should be able to do by the end of the course (or end of the week/unit if using weekly learning outcomes). This course mapping guide from UCSD provides more detailed definitions (https://www.coursemapguide.com/build-a-vision).

Applying Design Justice to Your Course Learning Goals and Outcomes

Design Justice is a framework that provides 10 principles  to center the voice of those normally marginalized in design. In the context of teaching and learning, we can apply design justice to our course planning in a few ways:

• Consider inviting the voices of students, colleagues, community organizations/clinics, or other organizations or individuals that are connected to our discipline and course topic into the process of identifying goals for our course.  What ideas and values do they feel should be prioritized as goals for the course?
• Consider adding course goals that examine and analyze racism and justice issues within the discipline – for example, identifying and elevating voices of scientists whose work was not spotlighted in the field due to their marginalized status. Whose voices are traditionally centered in past iterations of the course and how might you de-center those voices?
• Reflect on how what you teach in the course interfaces with the local and/or global community. How will the relevance and connections be made clear to students? Are their community groups or individual leaders that could be engaged with the students in some way?
• Are there indigenous practices or knowledge related to this topic that can be elevated and incorporated into the learning? 

These are just a few ideas to reflect on when thinking about your course goals and outcomes.

See also: Advancing Inclusion and Anti-Racism in the College Classroom: A Rubric and Resource Guide for Instructors

Where to start: look at the big picture first – why would your students need or want to take your course?

Where does your course fall in the curriculum of your department? Are there key skills or knowledge that students must learn in order to be prepared for the next course? If you are unsure of the answer to these questions, consulting with other faculty that teach the next course in the series or your department chair may be a good place to start.

Use Bloom’s and/or Fink’s Taxonomy to help you Phrase Course Outcomes 

Bloom’s taxonomy is a framework that provides a language and method for developing learning outcomes that vary across different levels of cognitive development.  Skills like simple recall are called “lower order” cognitive skills and more complex skills like analysis and making predictions are “higher order”.  The following resource on Bloom’s Taxonomy can help you craft clear learning outcomes across the spectrum as well as evaluate any current learning outcomes you have already developed. This framework can also be used to help you evaluate the type of questions you create for an exam or other assignment.

Higher Education consultant Dee Fink suggests a framework that includes additional humanistic learning outcomes. In his model, these latter outcomes are what make learning experiences “significant”, meaning that the learning will have a greater impact and persist longer because it includes an element of personalization and application to one’s own life.

Resource: Revised Bloom’s Handout from Iowa State University

 

Use Fink’s model or a Course Mapping Guide to Help Align Course Outcomes With Goals, Activities and Assessments 

This guide for course design from Dee Fink will walk you through a process for developing learning outcomes that address different levels of cognitive thinking.

This Course Mapping Guide from UCSD is another way to go through the process step-by-step, including a Course Map Template in Word.