Creating Learning Outcomes

What do learning outcomes do?

• Provide a foundation for developing the course's format, content and assessment tool.
• Inform the participant what he/she is expected to do as a result of the learning event.
• Assist potential participants in determining if the course is appropriate for their level of knowledge and skills.

Keys to writing and using learning outcomes

• Focus on the performance of the learner.
• State learning outcomes in clear, concise, measurable and observable terms.
• Avoid vague words, like understand, know, become aware of, become familiar with, which are difficult to measure. Instead, choose action verbs, such as perform, identify, describe, explain, demonstrate. For suggested verbs and activities, see the "Skill Demonstration" section of  Learning Outcomes Guidelines.
• Use the learning outcomes as a basis to create the learner assessment.
• For a large course, such as a convention, make sure that each session can be keyed to one of the overall learning outcomes, or write a specific learning outcome for each individual session.
• Relate the content of the course directly to the sciences as they pertain to speech-language pathology, audiology, speech/language/hearing sciences, and/or the contemporary practice of speech-language pathology and audiology.