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The learning outcomes of a programme or module state what it is intended that students will be able to do as a result of completing the learning process.

It is therefore necessary to design courses to ensure that the learning outcomes, learning process and assessment are closely aligned. This ensures that:

• what is to be learned;
• how it is to be learned;
• how it will be evident that this has been learned and 
• the extent to which this has been achieved is made clear.

Writing learning outcomes and achieving this Alignment is therefore complex.

This extract is from a guide written for the Imaginative Curriculum Project, reproduced here with permission from the Higher Education Academy. This guide gives a comprehensive overview of writing and using learning outcomes: 

"The higher education system is being encouraged to be more explicit about the nature of the learning that programmes and modules are intending to promote. For example, through QAA policies like programme specifications and subject benchmark statements. In the last decade most HE institutions have adopted a learning outcomes approach in order to explain more precisely the learning that teachers are seeking to promote.

HE teachers are expected to be able to show how:

• the educational outcomes for a programme and learning outcomes for a module are being achieved; 
• that the assessment methods used are appropriate to test the achievement of the intended outcomes; 
• and that the criteria used to judge achievement are aligned to the intended learning outcomes. "

'Using Learning Outcomes to Design a Course and Assess Learning', the Imaginative Curriculum Project (Jackson, Wisdom and Shaw, March 2003)

Macquarie University has an excellent page on writing learning outcomes, and includes an explanation of the Bloom Taxonomy (which can be used for selecting verbs for learning outcomes) 

A useful guide on using learning outcomes has also been written as part of the preparation for implementing the Bologna process.
 

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