Learning Outcomes describe what you expect students to be able to do by the end of the course. They are not just what is covered in the course, but rather what students should be able to demonstrate or accomplish based on the instruction they received. Thus, learning outcomes normally include action verbs like solve, analyze, select, and justify, design, etc…
Learning outcomes should be specific and measurable. The action verbs typically inform how one might measure the student’s ability to meet the learning outcome. At the course level, there are typically 3-5 Learning Outcomes that cover much of the content of the course.
In a paper by A. Gomes and F. B. Correia, “Bloom’s Taxonomy Based Approach to Learn Basic Programming Loops,” 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2018, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/FIE.2018.8658947
Researchers organized a test, using the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, where all the questions were about the programming loop topic. Using a statistical analysis based on the grades students obtained on each question of the test, the authors concluded that the approach they followed has clear pedagogical advantages to weaker students, making them more confident and motivated and allowed teachers to use adequate strategies to each of the identified students’ difficulties. Section 2 of the paper discusses how this taxonomy can be applied to programming classes.
If you need help thinking about and writing learning outcomes, please let me know a good time to meet.
Leave a Reply