Yelin Su
Learning Outcomes and Course Design
(2018, April 04). Retrieved April 12, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo1rC1-zNoQ
When beginning the course design process, we normally start with our intentions or goals: we set our course objectives to state what we want to teach in our course. Many of us take a content-oriented approach to set course goals – that is, we create narratives to summarize and outline concepts, knowledge, procedures, skills, and values that we are planning to cover in our class. Take an education course for example, one objective might be to promote and disseminate pedagogy-based and research-informed eLearning practices.
But what do our course goals really mean to us and to our students? What steps do we need to take to ensure the achievement of these goals? How do we know whether we’ve achieved our goals or not? Regardless of how the course will be delivered (e.g. online, blended, face to face), these are fundamental questions to course design. To answer them, we need to go one step further which is to define our learning outcomes.
Course goals and learning outcomes
A learning outcome is a “statement describing what and how a student is expected to learn after exposure to teaching” (Biggs & Tang, 2007, p64). Learning outcomes are derived from course goals. Course goals are teacher-centered and provide the instructor with an overarching guideline and framework for instructional design. But it is necessary to go beyond course goals to be explicit and specific about what course goals mean in terms of students’ performance – what do we really expect students to able to accomplish under certain contexts so that we can conclude that course goals have been reached?
Let’s take a look at the following conventional course goals:
- To provide a basic understanding of the elements of nonfiction English.
- To familiarize students with knowledge of standard English grammar.
Imagine if you were an instructor who was given a course to teach with these course goals. How would you interpret these goals in your course design? Would you have a clear picture of what steps you would need to take to help your students to reach your expectations? Would you have ideas on how you would measure students’ achievements? If this were a multi-session course and you were only teaching one session, would you be confident that you were having similar expectations for your students as other instructors?
Now think from students’ perspective: if you were a student reading these course goals, would you be clear on what the instructor expected from you? Would you know how to demonstrate the level of “understanding” and “familiarization” required? Different individuals might have very different answers to these questions based on their expertise, experience, and perceptions.
Course learning outcomes are the clarification/elaboration on course goals about what a student should be able to accomplish as a result of taking the course. They set concrete