Tag: Course Learning Outcomes

Peer-Reviewed Paper Published: Defining What, Where, and When We Want Students to Learn

December 12, 2025December 26, 2025 Graham Glynn

To become a learning-centric organization, institutions must define expected student learning through a structured plan encompassing all educational levels. This includes creating clear learning goals and outcomes, using frameworks like Bloom’s Taxonomy, guiding curriculum development, and understanding the interconnections between various courses and programs for effective student transition and learning.

Chief Academic Affairs Office Staff, Dean’s Office Staff (Deans, Executive Deans, Associate/Assistant Deans, etc.), Department Chair Office Staff (Chairs, Assistant Chairs, Program Directors, etc.), Featured, President’s Office Staff, Recurrent, Vice President Student Affairs Staff (VP, Assoc./Assist. VP, etc.)

Facilitating Learning

Facilitating learning is a broader topic than teaching. It includes designing effective and efficient programs, selection of appropriate course content and materials, the design of the course, classroom and online dynamics, and the art of content delivery in many different venues and with many different teaching styles. This article is a compilation of many interviews with faculty from many disciplines, providing powerful testimonies and detailed implementation strategies for what has worked well in their classrooms. By studying this article and its linked resources, and by using the associated shared files, you will be able to:
• Enable students to participate in selecting and sharing resources for courses that will help them succeed.
• Explain strategies that can help students progress through the curriculum efficiently and measure the overall effectiveness of scheduling and advising processes.
• Explain the impact of student motivation on learning and success.
• Evaluate a wide variety of pedagogical strategies including lecturing, the flipped classroom, student focused teaching, modelling and simulations, game-based learning, collaborative learning, experiential learning, and metacognition.
• Design more effective online and blended learning experiences.

White Paper – Evaluating and Assessing Student Readiness for Courses

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This white paper can be provided to a faculty group to help them consider issues around student preparation for learning, and how the curriculum might be modified to take better advantage of this.

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Defining What, Where, and When We Want Students to Learn

The most important step to becoming a learning-centric organization and generating the greatest value-add for students is to clearly define the learning we expect of them. This requires the development of a unifying and hierarchical plan for student learning, specifying institutional, college/school, program, and course learning goals and outcomes. By studying this article and its linked resources, and by using the associated shared files, you will be able to:
• Explain the interrelationship between courses within a credential, General Education, Liberal Education, and Honor’s programs, at various degree levels.
• Explain why learning goals, and their derivative learning outcomes, are necessary to clearly define the learning expectations of our students for each credential, and should predominantly be written, or at least approved by, the faculty of the department.
• Compose program learning outcomes based on the Bloom’s Taxonomy level that is most appropriate for the credential/degree.
• Guide the development of learning goals and outcomes for the entire curriculum of the institution.
• Explain what the Degree Qualification Profile and the Tuning initiatives are, and how they might aid an institution in setting learning outcomes for various degree levels and programs.
• Develop learning goals and outcomes to help students transition successfully into college.
• Explain the difference between the curriculum, the co-curriculum, and the extra-curriculum.
• Explain why and how Honor’s Program learning outcomes should differ from those within traditional courses.
• Design a faculty development exercise to help faculty learn the curriculum design process using a non-threatening approach.
• Explain the potential sources of information on which program learning outcomes could be based.
• Explain the relationship between program and course learning outcomes, between course level and Bloom’s level, and how course level outcomes progressively develop toward achievement of the program outcome.
• Explain how course learning outcomes can be aggregated to form courses with appropriate co- and pre-requisites.
• Explain how a course might support learning outcomes from multiple programs such as the major, General Education, and Honors.