Foundations

“What must learners be able to do outside of the classroom as a result of their learning?”

A sample planning tool to assist with curriculum development using OBE is as follows and is adapted from Stiehl & Sours, 2017.

Outcomes state a vision for what learners will be able to do outside of the classroom as a result of their learning and provides a guide for faculty to develop and teach curriculum (Stiehl & Sours, 2017).

According to Stiehl & Sour (2017, pp. 40-42), when writing outcomes, there are six essential characteristics. Does the outcome:

1. detail ACTION, using action words and the active voice?
2. provide CONTEXT for what learners will do in the real world after the learning experience?
3. consider SCOPE only including what can be accomplished within reasonable timeframes in the learning experience?
4. include COMPLEXITY to ensure content can be formulated form it?
5. practice BREVITY? and
6. provide CLARITY for the content (does it make sense)?

A model for determining learning outcomes is as follows:

Student action + content + standard to meet the objective (Assessment Criteria, 2017).

Bloom's Taxonomy

Using Bloom’s taxonomy (1956) will assist when writing learning outcomes. The taxonomy Includes levels of achievement in the following learning domains:

• psychomotor (skills),
• affective (behaviour),
• and cognitive (knowledge) domain.

The cognitive (or thinking) domain involves knowledge and intellectual skill development (Bloom 1956). Bloom’s original cognitive domain taxonomy included

• evaluation,
• synthesis,
• analysis,
• application,
• comprehension,
• and knowledge.

Later, the cognitive domain taxonomy was revised by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) to include two higher levels of learning (create and evaluate) and to use verbs as a form of expression.

References

Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman. 

Assessment criteria (2017).  University of Technology Syndey (UTS). Retrieved March 9, 2018, from https://www.uts.edu.au/research-and-teaching/learning-and-teaching/assessment/assessment-criteria 

Stiehl, R. & Sours, L. (2017).  The outcome primer:  Envisioning learning outcomes. The Learning Organization, Corvallis, Oregon.