Learning Outcomes

Learning outcomes describe what learners should know, value, or be able to do by the end of a learning experience. They help communicate the intended goals of learning and provide direction for instruction, assessment, and learning activities.

Learning outcomes can exist at multiple levels, including lesson, module, course, program, and degree levels. In learner-centred instructional design, outcomes play an important role in creating alignment across the learning experience. Assessments, instructional activities, resources, and feedback opportunities should all support learners in achieving the intended outcomes.

Writing Effective Learning Outcomes

Effective learning outcomes are learner-focused, measurable, and clearly communicated. They describe what learners should know, value, or be able to demonstrate by the end of a learning experience.

A common structure for writing learning outcomes is:

Strong learning outcomes typically include four key elements:

Example

Using Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's taxonomy refers to a framework to categorize educational goals. It was first developed by Benjamin Bloom and colleagues in 1956 and consisted of six categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. In 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl revised Bloom's taxonomy, making some structural changes and replacing the nouns in Bloom's categories with verbs.

The revised version of Bloom's taxonomy summarizes the process of learning, from lower order skills like remembering and understanding to higher order skills like evaluating and creating. You can use Bloom's taxonomy table to identify action verbs that align with each learning level. You can then incorporate these measurable verbs into learning outcomes to clearly indicate what the student must do to demonstrate learning.

Examples

The examples below align with each learning level in Bloom's taxonomy.

References