1. Learning Outcomes: Design Aspects
Edamana Prasad, TLC,IIT Madras,

2. Thanks to.. Dr Jeffrey E. Froyd TEES Research Professor Engineering Student Services and Academic Programs Dwight Look College of Engineering | Texas A&M University TAMU | College Station, TX Prof Ajit Kolar, Rtd. Professor, Mechanical Engineer, IIT Madras Dr Nandita Madhavan, Chemistry, IIT Bombay Dr Smita Srivastava, Biotechnology, IIT Madras

3. What do you expect your students to learn in your course?
Think about the question
Share your thoughts in your group
Activity time: 03 minutes

4. Learning Outcome of this session..
At the end of the session, you will be able to
Write Learning Outcome for your course

5. Learning Outcomes (LO)
LO should address the following questions:
What should your learner DO as a result of your
instruction? OR
In what level should your learner think as a
result of your instruction?

6. What should be the purpose of learning outcomes
What should be the purpose of learning outcomes? (From the instructor’s point of view)
Think about the question
Share your thoughts in your group
Activity time: 03 minutes

7. Responses

8. Purpose Outcomes help instructors
To make guidelines for preparing classroom material
To keep the focus on specific end results
To create homework assignments
To design exams questions

9. What should be the purpose of learning outcomes
What should be the purpose of learning outcomes? (From the learner’s point of view)
Think about the question
Share your thoughts in your group
Activity time: 03 minutes

10. Responses

11. Purpose Outcomes help students To get a clear course goal
To get a framework for measuring their success by themselves
To reduce their stress
To improve their studying effectiveness
Source -

12. Defining learning outcome
Learning outcome is your expectation of the learner performance in a course
Learning Outcome should contain a observable/measurable action verb
The action verb should describe the expected performance from the learner

13. Exercise: Writing Learning Outcome
Think about a course you will be teaching in next semester
Write a learning outcome for the course
Activity time: 05 minutes

14. Challenges Most of us tend to use verbs such as Understand Know
Appreciate
Demonstrate knowledge…. Etc.
What is the problem?

15. Certain action verbs do not convey the intended meaning
Assume that the learning outcome is:
The student will be able to understand first law of thermodynamics.
To check learning, the teacher may frame the following questions:
State first law of thermodynamics
Use first law of thermodynamics to solve the problem
Judge whether the following system obey first law of thermodynamics
Do they require same
Cognitive Effort?

16. Choosing the right Action Verb
A helpful tool – Bloom’s Taxonomy
Devised by Benjamin Bloom and colleagues in 1950s
Focus on 3 domains
Cognitive (Thinking)
Affective (Attitudes/ Feeling)
Psychomotor (doing)
Bloom, B. S. & David R. K. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Outcomes Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York , Longmans.

17. Original Taxonomy Different levels of learning/thinking
Knowledge
Recall of Information
mastery of subject matter
Analysis
Seeing patterns
recognition of nuances
Synthesis
Create new ideas
from existing ones
Comprehension
Understanding meaning
getting the context
Evaluation
Compare ideas
assess value
Application
Solving problems using
given information
Can you arrange these from ‘less challenging’ to ‘more challenging’ order?

18. Taxonomy and Levels of Thinking
Lower levels of thinking
Higher levels of thinking
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
How are these helpful in writing learning outcomes?

19. Bloom’s Taxonomy The verbs involved in the levels are more evident
Synthesis is moved to the highest level of thinking
Knowledge
Comprehension
Application
Synthesis
Analysis
Evaluation
Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
Original
Revised
Anderson, L. W. et al (2001). A Taxonomy for teaching, learning, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York , Longman.

20. Exercise: Writing LO using Blooms Taxonomy
Think of a course you will be teaching next semester
Write two learning outcomes for this course with different cognitive challenge, using Bloom’s taxonomy
Activity time: 05 minutes

21. BLOOM’S REVISED TAXONOMY
Create Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things Design, construct, plan, produce, invent.  
Evaluate Justifying a decision or course of action Check, hypothesise, critique, experiment, judge
Analyse Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships Compare, organise, deconstruct, interrogate, find  
Apply Using information in another familiar situation Implement, carry out, use,
execute    
Understand Explaining ideas or concepts Interpret, summarise, paraphrase, classify, explain
Remember Recalling information Recognize, list, describe, retrieve, name, find

22. Learning Outcomes & Bloom’s Taxonomy
A two step approach to learning outcomes
Step 1 : Identify the levels of thinking involved in the course using Bloom’s Taxonomy
Do you want the students to…….
Remember the material taught? Understand it?
Apply it? Analyze it? Evaluate it? Create something new from it? 

23. Step Two Choose the right verb for that level
Creating – construct, design, generate, plan, produce
Evaluating – critique, justify, conclude, judge, hypothesize
Analyzing – correlate, distinguish, deconstruct
Applying – determine, develop, compute, utilize, implement
Understanding – classify, explain, discuss, give example, summarize
Remembering – define, describe, list, reproduce, identify

24. What are your questions on LO?

25. Individual Activity
Identify levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy for the following LOs?
Activity Time – 2 minutes
Learning Outcome 1
Identify the system which shows apparent violation to third law of thermodynamics 2.
Identify the reason for apparent violation to third law of thermodynamics
Remembering
Understanding
Applying
Analyzing
Evaluating
Creating

26. Pair Exercise
Write a set of criteria by which you would evaluate a set of learning outcomes
Pair with a colleague
Prepare your criteria
10 minutes

27. Pair Exercise ??

28. Pair Exercise
Review and revise your set of learning outcomes based on criteria developed
Pair with a colleague
Give each other feedback on your learning outcomes
10 minutes
Remaining questions?

29. Summary Your expectations should be explicit
Learning outcomes make expectations explicit as well as establish a means to assess
Learning outcomes explains the cognitive challenges in a course
Learning outcomes provides a guideline for assessment
Your teaching approaches change after you start incorporating learning outcomes

30. Minute Paper Write brief answers to the following questions:
What is most valuable or helpful about writing learning outcomes?
What is the “muddiest or most confusing point” about writing learning outcomes?