Writing your student learning outcomes

The simplest approach to writing a learning outcome is to first generate the learning statement, then determine the action word, and finally, add the opening phrase to complete the outcome. The following sections provide approaches to generating a list of essential learning statements for your program and illustrate how you might use Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy to determine your action words.

Writing the Learning Statement for a Learning Outcome: Sources of Ideas

Generating a list of learning statements for your program’s learning outcomes begins with an examination of your mission statement and learning goals. Here we review this process and provide a few additional sources of ideas for developing learning statements for your program’s learning outcomes.

• Examining your mission statement and learning goals: Use the content of your mission and goals to determine what specific learning you expect students to achieve. For example, if one of your learning goals says that graduates of the program will have strong communication skills, then you should write learning statements for both written and oral communication skills.

• Look at what professional organizations in your discipline suggest: Many disciplinary and professional organizations have created statements defining what graduates in the field should be able to do - you can use these as a starting point and tailor them to your curriculum. Some organizations may use terms like learning goals or learning objectives for these statements; just remember that you are looking for statements that describe what a student should know, be able to do, or value. Examples of such statements from professional organizations:
  • Learning goals and outcomes from the American Psychology Association's guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major
  • Core competencies and learning outcomes from the American History Association's 2016 History Discipline Core.

• Engage faculty and students in your program in generating ideas for learning statements: Asking the faculty and the students in your program to engage in conversations about what the curriculum prepares students to know, do, and value can help you to create a list of learning statements, while also creating ownership of and interest in the process of assessment.

Choosing an Action for Your Learning Outcomes: Using Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

Once you’ve generated a learning statement for an outcome, you then need to choose an action word to describe how students will demonstrate their accomplishment of the learning. One way to choose the action word is to think about the type of learning you want students to demonstrate. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy can be helpful with this process as it provides a list of the major types of learning. The table below provides examples of action words for each major type of learning.

 Reference

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.