Learning Outcomes

educationstuff blog
Greg's views on education and science

Learning Outcomes – not my cup of tea
Learning outcomes are “statements that describe significant and essential learning that learners have achieved, and can reliably demonstrate at the end of a course or program. In other words, learning outcomes identify what the learner will know and be able to do by the end of a course or program.”

Now, that all sounds very innocent and plausible. Who could argue with any of it? Surely it’s no more than simple good practice.

I was at a meeting recently in which the words ‘learning outcomes’ were used a lot, accompanied by words like ‘track’ and ‘align’. (Everything must be ‘aligned’ these days.) Although I remained quiet, I was actually quite agitated inside. Although I fully recognise that third level education has had to change – for all sorts of perfectly valid reasons – I had a deepening sense that it had lost some of its ‘soul’, for lack of a better word. (Imagine having to write ‘learning outcomes’ for a module on Shakespeare’s tragedies.)

We no longer seemed to be talking about education in anything like the traditional third-level sense. No, the conversation sounded more and more like we were talking about some sort of advanced training course designed to ‘produce’ a generic graduate with defined ‘attributes’. This strikes me as somewhat ironic given this age of personalization, whether it be in education or medicine or entertainment. Indeed, learning outcomes are, in my view, part of a trend in modern third level education to control the student, something that is completely at odds with the stated aim of our sector to produce ‘independent learners’. (Words like ‘track’ and ‘intervene’ are now part of the normal discourse of third level education.)

Critics of the learning outcomes philosophy tend to be of a left-wing persuasion and see learning outcomes as part of a managerialist agenda, designed to monitor and control academic staff. I don’t think things are quite like that. I think learning outcomes are a consequence of the good intentions of often very dedicated people who perhaps need to have more faith in their colleagues. It seems to me that at the heart of the learning outcomes philosophy is a certain distrust of the individual academic, a lack of faith in his/her ability to design appropriate, well-structured modules and teach and assess those modules effectively. Or perhaps it’s a case of the system being driven by the unprofessionalism of a small number of academics who do not take their teaching seriously. (And that would be a managerial problem, not a system problem.)

Any good lecturer will have a clear idea in their head as to where they want their students to be at the end of a module and they will articulate that to the students. However, they will recognise that every class contains a wide range of students with diverse personalities, motivations and aptitudes. There will be no single destination for these students. Some will be happy just to survive; some will be unashamedly ambitious and work towards that First. The ‘learning outcome’ for everyone will be different. Completing the module will be a guarantee of very little really. For some, it will mean that have learned almost nothing, for others it will mean that they have acquired a broad and deep knowledge of the subject. That’s the way real education works. To quote our former Taoiseach, there’s a touch of the ‘smokes and daggers’ about learning outcomes.
@DrMCashin: @DrMCashin Learning Outcomes – not my cup of tea: “Learning outcomes are ‘statements that describe significant... http://t.co/t2y7RziGod Shared via TweetCaster