Writing Learning Outcomes

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Identifying Your Learning Outcomes

What will your learners know and be able to do by the end of your course? Your answers to this question will shape your learning outcomes.

Learning outcomes are specific, measurable, and attainable through the learning activities and assessments of the course. Outcomes generally start with a verb and demonstrate acquisition or competency in various knowledge and skills, including intellectual, cognitive, attitudinal, verbal and motor skills.

  • Intellectual: What knowledge, concepts, and methodologies will the student understand?
  • Cognitive: How will students organize, analyze, and apply knowledge?
  • Attitudinal: How will students respond to situations, problems, and scenarios?
  • Verbal: How will students express their organization, analysis, and application of knowledge?
  • Motor: What actions or practices will students need to achieve and perform?

Learning outcomes use active language. The outcomes link the course content, skills, and values and may connect to the larger curriculum of your department or unit.

The Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (2008) notes the alignment of learning outcomes and assessments and offers the following questions to consider as you begin drafting your learning outcomes.

  • What content or skills will be covered in this instruction?
  • What should students know or be able to do as a result of this unit of instruction?
  • How will you be able to tell that students have achieved this outcome?
  • What kind of work can students produce to demonstrate this?

The A&S Academic Handbook recommends you articulate the pedagogical objectives you have for your course, e.g. what learning outcomes you expect from your students by the end. Your objectives may seem quite clear to you or be seen as patently obvious by those in your discipline, but students are often very unclear about these things. Explicitly stated learning objectives may serve as a reference point throughout the course, allowing students to track their progress toward your destination.

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SMART (TT) Outcomes

The Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (2008) identifies effective learning outcomes as including the following SMART (TT) elements:

  • Speaks to the learner: What will your learners know and be able to do by the end of your course?
  • Is measurable: How will the learning be assessed?
  • Is applicable: How will students use the knowledge and skills gained?
  • Is realistic: Can the outcomes be realistically achieved within the context of the course?
  • Is time-bound: When will the outcomes be achieved?
  • Is transparent: Are your learning outcomes clear and understandable to your students?
  • Is transferable: Can the knowledge and skills be used in various contexts?

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Learning Outcome Verbs

As mentioned earlier, learning outcomes use active language, often beginning with a verb. Bloom’s taxonomy offers a framework for thinking about the types of verbs to use when articulating specific, measurable, and attainable learning outcomes. The verbs used signal levels of learning.

At the entry-level of Bloom’s taxonomy are the remembering verbs, such as list, find, name, identify, locate, describe, memorize, and define.

As students develop an understanding of the knowledge or skill, they begin to interpret, summarize, explain, infer, paraphrase, and discuss.

Further competency allows students to apply the knowledge or skill, which may appear in the form of using diagrams, making charts, drawing, applying, solving, and calculating.

At the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy are the creating, evaluating, and analyzing activities. At these levels, students may use the information to create something new (creating), critically examine the information and make judgements (evaluating), or take information apart and explore relationships (analyzing). Relevant verbs for each of these activities are listed below.

  • Creating: design, build, construct, plan, produce, devise, invent
  • Evaluating: judge, test, critique, defend, criticize
  • Analyzing: categorize, examine, compare/contrast, organize

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University offers a visualization of Bloom's taxonomy Links to an external site. and lists verbs for assignments organized by the three domains of learning.

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Reference and Additional Resources

Centre for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Learning outcomes Links to an external site.. University of Alberta Centre for Teaching and Learning.

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Taxonomies of Learning Links to an external site.. Harvard University The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

Greenleaf, E. (2008). Developing learning outcomes. University of Toronto Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation.

Teaching and Learning Services. (2017, August 10). Learning outcomes Links to an external site.. Carleton University Teaching and Learning Services.

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