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Student Learning Outcomes

Essential Elements of Learning Outcomes

What knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes should students possess when they graduate with a degree from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center? What are the key learning outcomes for each degree? What level of proficiency is expected?

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) are specific, discrete statements that indicate the knowledge, skill, or attitude students are expected to have/do at the end of a course/degree. There are three essential components of a SLO:

  1. The observable, measurable action or behavior
  2. Learning context or content

 

Criterion for success

Cognitive Domain (Thinking)
Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Anderson, Krathwohl, et al., 2000)

SLO Level

Active Verbs

Remembering: Recall previous learned information.

Defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels, lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes, reproduces, selects, states.

Understanding: Comprehending the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and problems. State a problem in one's own words.

Comprehends, converts, defends, distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes, gives an example, infers, interprets, paraphrases, predicts, rewrites, summarizes, translates.

Applying: Use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Applies what was learned in the classroom into novel situations in the workplace.

Applies, changes, computes, constructs, demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates, predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses.

Analyzing: Separates material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences.

Analyzes, breaks down, compares, contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates, discriminates, distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers, outlines, relates, selects, separates.

Evaluating: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials.

Appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates, evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates, summarizes, supports.

Creating: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure.

Categorizes, combines, compiles, composes, creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies, organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates, reorganizes, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes.

 


Affective Domain (Feeling)
Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Krathwohl, Bloom, Masia, 1973)

SLO Level

Active Verbs

Receiving Phenomena: Awareness, willingness to hear, selected attention.

Asks, chooses, describes, follows, gives, holds, identifies, locates, names, points to, selects, sits, erects, replies, uses.

Responding to Phenomena: Active participation on the part of the learners. Attends and reacts to a particular phenomenon. Learning outcomes may emphasize compliance in responding, willingness to respond, or satisfaction in responding (motivation).

Answers, assists, aids, complies, conforms, discusses, greets, helps, labels, performs, practices, presents, reads, recites, reports, selects, tells, writes.

Valuing: The worth or value a person attaches to a particular object, phenomenon, or behavior. This ranges from simple acceptance to the more complex state of commitment. Valuing is based on the internalization of a set of specified values, while clues to these values are expressed in the learner's overt behavior and are often identifiable.

Completes, demonstrates, differentiates, explains, follows, forms, initiates, invites, joins, justifies, proposes, reads, reports, selects, shares, studies, works.

Organization: Organizes values into priorities by contrasting different values, resolving conflicts between them, and creating a unique value system. The emphasis is on comparing, relating, and synthesizing values.

Adheres, alters, arranges, combines, compares, completes, defends, explains, formulates, generalizes, identifies, integrates, modifies, orders, organizes, prepares, relates, synthesizes.

Internalizing values (characterization): Has a value system that controls their behavior. The behavior is pervasive, consistent, predictable, and most importantly, characteristic of the learner. Instructional objectives are concerned with the student's general patterns of adjustment (personal, social, emotional).

Acts, discriminates, displays, influences,

listens, modifies, performs, practices, proposes, qualifies, questions, revises, serves, solves, verifies.


Psychomotor Domain (Doing)
(Simpson, 1972)

SLO Level

Active Verbs

Perception (awareness): The ability to use sensory cues to guide motor activity. This ranges from sensory stimulation, through cue selection, to translation.

Chooses, describes, detects, differentiates, distinguishes, identifies, isolates, relates, selects.

Set: Readiness to act. It includes mental, physical, and emotional sets. These three sets are dispositions that predetermine a person's response to different situations (sometimes called mindsets).

Begins, displays, explains, moves, proceeds, reacts, shows, states, volunteers.

Guided Response: The early stages in learning a complex skill that includes imitation and trial and error. Adequacy of performance is achieved by practicing.

Copies, traces, follows, react, reproduce, responds.

Mechanism (basic proficiency): This is the intermediate stage in learning a complex skill. Learned responses have become habitual and the movements can be performed with some confidence and proficiency.

Assembles, calibrates, constructs, dismantles, displays, fastens, fixes, grinds, heats, manipulates, measures, mends, mixes, organizes, sketches.

Complex Overt Response (Expert): The skillful performance of motor acts that involve complex movement patterns. Proficiency is indicated by a quick, accurate, and highly coordinated performance, requiring a minimum of energy. This category includes performing without hesitation, and automatic performance. For example, players often utter sounds of satisfaction or expletives as soon as they hit a tennis ball or throw a football, because they can tell by the feel of the act what the result will produce.

Assembles, builds, calibrates, constructs, dismantles, displays, fastens, fixes, grinds, heats, manipulates, measures, mends, mixes, organizes, sketches.

NOTE: The Keywords are the same as Mechanism, but will have adverbs or adjectives that indicate that the performance is quicker, better, more accurate, etc.

Adaptation: Skills are well developed, and the individual can modify movement patterns to fit special requirements.

Adapts, alters, changes, rearranges, reorganizes, revises, varies.

Origination: Creating new movement patterns to fit a particular situation or specific problem. Learning outcomes emphasize creativity based upon highly developed skills.

Arranges, builds, combines, composes, constructs, creates, designs, initiate, makes, originates.


 

Common Assessment Issues

Source: Levy (2019)

  1. Measuring intervention instead of learning
    There’s not a problem in wanting to measure or capture satisfaction or quality of an intervention – that’s good information to know – but it’s not learning. While a help desk technician may have been friendly, if the student cannot replicate the troubleshooting steps to resolve a user error that they made, that’s important to know (i.e., satisfied with the technician, but learning did not occur). It’s okay to measure satisfaction or quality, but also look to articulate and measure what the student will know, think, or be able to do as a result of the satisfactory or quality intervention.

  2. Making too complicated or wordy of a statement
    People sometimes make writing learning outcomes more complicated than it needs to be, thinking they need to use big words or make it sound very academic. Remember: These are student learning outcomes. If the student wouldn’t understand the statement, there’s a problem. So, do just that – pilot your outcome statements with students to see if they understand what’s intended. You can also share your draft outcome statements with colleagues outside of your area for feedback, opening the door for them to share tips based on their outcomes.

  3. Covering multiple outcomes in one statement.
    We sometimes unintentionally capture more than one behavior in an outcome statement. The word “and” is typically a sign you’re doing too much. It may sound logical to say something like, “students will identify and utilize campus resources,” but this names two behaviors: identify and utilize.
    What happens if a student can identify UTHSC has Career Development but does not utilize their services? This complicates assessment efforts. In these cases, look to separate into unique outcomes or pick the behavior you care more about (e.g., while identification is great, if you really want to know who uses the service, keep “utilize” and drop “identify”).

  4. Outcomes may not be realistic given conditions
    You may hope students can articulate an engaging elevator speech to a potential employer because of working with a career coach, but that may be the result of multiple meetings and should be stated as such. Or perhaps you hope students will persist and graduate as the result of selecting a major fitting their career goals with an enrollment counselor. While that’s a good hope, is it really fair or appropriate to hold Enrollment responsible for a student navigating their entire college career to graduation? Maintain scope of interventions in articulating expected learning.

  5. Feeling like an exercise without connection
    Learning outcomes should matter to you and your program; they should reflect what you hope or intend for students to be able to do given your interventions. If you feel like you are making things up or do not actually anticipate seeing certain knowledge, skills, or behavior, do not write that. If you feel like your program doesn’t impact student learning at all, look to discuss it with your assessment leader on campus.

Do you know of an issue that is not covered in the list? Please contact Sharon Valente, svalen11@uthsc.edu


Learning Outcome Generators


Indiana University Learning Outcome Generator

Learning Outcomes Generator from Easygenerator.com

Outcome Generator from the University of Nevada, Reno


 

Sep 4, 2024