Writing Measurable Behavioral Learning Outcomes

...say that five times fast.

"Writing measurable behavioral learning outcomes" is actually much harder to say than it is to do. Learning outcomes help you as the instructor clarify exactly what it is that you want students to be able to do, and helps the students understand what you expect them to be able to do by the end of a certain time frame, e.g. a class, a unit, a term, or the completion of a degree. As instructors, you work at the course and unit level of learning outcomes, so that is what we will focus on here. 

Course Learning Outcomes
The successful completion of your course's learning outcomes should align with your programs broader set of learning outcomes. Every course has a set of Learning Outcomes that have been sent to Middle States for accreditation, so if you are not familiar with your course learning outcomes, ask your program director. There should be about 5-7 course outcomes that are broad enough to cover the entire term's worth of content. A course outcome might look something like “Students will demonstrate correct writing skills”, and one corresponding unit outcome could be “Students will write sentences that demonstrate correct usage of commas, semicolons, and periods”.

Unit Learning Outcomes
note: for simplicity I will use the term "unit" for this section, but depending on your course it could be interchangeable with week, chapter, module etc. Just make sure that you choose one term for the entire course. 

Unit learning outcomes identify exactly what it is that you want your students to be able to do by the end of each unit and tie directly back up to the broader course-level learning outcomes. For example, if you have a unit on World War II, what do you want them to know and/or be able to do at the end of the unit? Discuss five battles? List the dates of five major battles? Explain the causes of the war? Write about the aftermath? Identify three world leaders at the time? Recognize the major countries involved? All of these terms are specific, measurable and behavioral. Clearly identifying what you want the students to do or know and when you want them to demonstrate this makes your job of measuring their knowledge much easier. It is also important to remember to write your outcomes in language that students can easily understand, so always avoid using jargon or obscure terms from your discipline. Students should easily understand what you want them to do!

In addition, all learning outcome statements should link directly to how you are assessing the students. If the students need to "discuss" something, they should be assessed using classroom discussions or online discussion boards, if the students are asked to "identify" something, you could use a standard multiple-choice test. So for example, three outcomes could be stated like: By the end of Unit 1, students will be able to 1) discuss three major battles of WWII 2) identify five world leaders at the time of WWII and 3) explain the role of the five identified leaders in the war. The degree to which your students are able to complete that task gives you direct proof of your student’s level of knowledge. 

When working with faculty to write unit learning outcomes there is just one thing that often gets in the way, and that is the vague and overused term, "understand". It would be very easy to say for a WWII learning outcome that you want the students to "understand" the causes of WWII. But what does that mean? If you catch yourself doing this take it one step further and ask how will I know that they understand? Are the going to discuss it? Are they going to write about it? Am I giving a multiple choice mid-term on it? Once you do that, it is easy to go back and replace the word "understand" with what it is that the students are doing to prove that they "understand". They are writing about the three main causes leading to WWII. They are identifying the major world leaders and their role in the development of the war. Tada...you have now written a learning outcome that is behavioral and measurable, that is, you have assigned a method for the students to show you what they know- writing, taking an exam, participating in a class discussion, and from that method you can assess the degree to which they are proficient in the task assigned.

Admittedly, it can sometimes be tricky to come up with the exact term that you want to use in your learning outcome, but luckily there are many tools created to help. Here is a link to Bloom’sTaxonomy Chart and Wheel for Writing Learning Outcomes. Blooms taxonomy breaks down the types of objectives into knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, and the wheel identifies different activities and behavioral terms for each category. Print this out and next time that you get stuck trying to figure out how you will know that your students "understand", pull this out.

**********************************************************************************************************

For more examples and information about writing measurable behavioral learning outcomes please view the resources below provided by Steve DiPietro, COAS Director of Outcomes and Assessment:

Guidelines to Writing Unit-Level Learning Outcomes, based on the original work of Jenny Moon [Gosling, D., & Moon, J. (2001). How to use learning outcomes and assessment criteria. London: SEEC. Guidance notes for writing unit and course aims and learning outcomes Page 3 of 16 Version 2, June 2010]

Chapter 2 of Florida State University’s Instructional Handbook
            * note: the term “objective”, used in this handbook, is interchangeable with the term “outcome”