A practical guide on writing learning outcomes
3. Step-by-step tutorial
Before you write your course's learning outcomes, you need to identify and select the essential, distinct, measurable and demonstrable learning you want students to achieve in this course. Аsk yourself what you want your students to learn. Don't hesitate to talk to other colleagues about this - sometimes an advice coming from the outside can be a valuable contribution.
1. Remember you always start with the construct "The learner will be able to...".
What is presumed here, but frequently omitted for sake of clarity of presentation, is a furter phrase placed before this, i.e. "When they complete the course [the learner will be able to]".
2. You've already asked yourself - and probably others - what is the essential, distinctive, measurable and demonstrable learning in this course. Now, based on that, select an appropriate action verb in relation to the specific student knowledge, skill or disposition to be demonstrated.
Choose verbs that allow you to measure student learning, e.g. instead of saying a student should understand a concept, write that they should be able to describe, explain, or identify, key elements of the concept. Or, select a verb demonstrating students’ ability to comprehend, apply, analyze, or evaluate concepts, work with their abstractions and projections, or even create new ones.
Examples: The learner/student [who complete this course] will be able to:
- define and explain the difference between misinformation and disinformation by providing relevant examples;
- apply the Eggshell model for verification of information items;
- discuss the nature, and provide examples, of the 4 key cognitive pillars of De Facto, and explain how they can be used for manipulation.
3. Next, clearly identify the specific knowledge, skill or disposition you would like students to be able to demonstrate.
Examples: The learner/student [who complete this course] will be able to:
- determine and evaluate their own susceptibility to disinformation;
- explain changes in behaviour with regard to working with information, that can protect them from disinformation;
- distinguish between different types of motivation for disinformation;
- identify and compare the different information types;
- use abstraction to outline the impact of disinformation on education [social life, politics, media, personal life...].
4. Critically important, be certain to pair each learning outcome with at least one (preferably more) learning activitiy that will allow your students to achieve this outcome and permit you to measure this achievement.
It is frequently observed fact that many educators, having mastered the structural, morphological construct of learning outcomes, fail in this step when they need to plan and demonstrate through which specific learning activities these outcomes will be achieved. Unless this pairing is done, the outcomes remain a wish that is not backed by substance.