Setting Learning Outcomes for Effective Assessments

Every meaningful assessment begins long before the exam paper is set or the rubric is drafted. It begins with a deceptively simple question: what exactly do we want students to be able to do by the end of this course? That question, when answered with precision, produces a learning outcome – and learning outcomes are arguably the most consequential decisions an educator makes. They shape what gets taught, how it gets taught, and critically, how student progress gets measured. Yet in practice, many instructors still write outcomes that are vague, unmeasurable, or disconnected from assessment. This post breaks down what learning outcomes are, how to categorize them, how to write them well, and why aligning them with assessment is non-negotiable in higher education.

What are learning outcomes? 🔗

Learning outcomes are clear, written statements that describe what a student should know, understand, or be able to do upon completing a course, module, or program. They are forward-looking by design – they define the destination before the journey begins. As the University of Maryland’s Teaching and Learning Transformation Center puts it, learning outcomes articulate what a student should know or be able to do after completing a course or program, and assessing them puts student learning at the forefront of academic planning.

It is worth distinguishing outcomes from goals. A goal is a broad intention – “students will appreciate the importance of research methods.” An outcome is specific and demonstrable – “students will design a research instrument appropriate to a given social science question.” The difference matters because outcomes drive assessments. If you cannot observe or measure it, it is a goal, not an outcome.

Outcomes can be written at different levels: at the program level (what graduates of the degree can do), the course level (what students can do by the end of the semester), and the lesson or module level (what students can do after this week’s content). Each level should build toward the next, creating a coherent pathway of learning progression.

Types of learning outcomes 🔗

Not all learning outcomes are the same. They vary by the kind of competency they target. Bloom’s Taxonomy, first developed by Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues in 1956 and revised in 2001 by Anderson and Krathwohl, remains the most widely used framework for classifying learning outcomes by cognitive complexity. The revised taxonomy reorganized the original six categories into action verbs, making them directly usable when writing measurable objectives.

Knowledge and recall 🔗

The foundational tier involves remembering – recalling facts, definitions, and concepts. Outcomes at this level use verbs like list, define, identify, name, and recall. For example: “Students will be able to define the key principles of contract law.” These outcomes are appropriate for introductory courses where establishing a knowledge base is the primary goal. They are easy to measure through quizzes and short-answer questions but represent only the entry point of learning.

Comprehension and understanding 🔗

Moving up, understanding outcomes ask students to explain, summarize, classify, or interpret what they know. Verbs here include explain, describe, paraphrase, classify, and illustrate. An outcome might read: “Students will be able to explain the difference between qualitative and quantitative research approaches.” This level confirms that students have processed information rather than simply memorized it.

Application 🔗

Application outcomes require students to use knowledge in new or practical contexts. Verbs include apply, solve, demonstrate, implement, and use. For instance: “Students will be able to apply statistical methods to analyze a given dataset.” As the Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer notes, if an objective targets the application level, a simple multiple-choice quiz cannot adequately assess it – the assessment must match the cognitive demand of the outcome.

Higher-order outcomes: analysis, evaluation, and creation 🔗

The upper tiers of Bloom’s Taxonomy involve the most complex thinking. Analysis asks students to break material into parts and examine relationships – using verbs like compare, contrast, differentiate, and examine. Evaluation involves making judgments based on criteria – verbs include judge, critique, defend, and justify. Creation, the highest level, asks students to produce something original – using verbs like design, construct, develop, and propose. In advanced courses, learning outcomes should increasingly target these higher-order levels, pushing students beyond surface recall toward deep, transferable competence.

Skill-based outcomes, which often span multiple levels of Bloom’s, describe practical, discipline-specific abilities – conducting a laboratory procedure, writing a legal brief, or delivering a patient assessment. These outcomes typically require performance-based assessments such as demonstrations, portfolios, or observed practice.

How to define clear learning outcomes 🔗

Vague outcomes produce vague assessments. The most common error instructors make is using unmeasurable verbs. Words like understand, know, appreciate, be familiar with, and learn – while intuitive – are not observable and cannot be assessed. A student cannot prove they “understand” something; they can, however, explain it in their own words, apply it to a new case, or critique an argument that contradicts it.

According to a peer-reviewed guide published in the Journal of Education in Perioperative Medicine (NIH), well-written learning outcomes should begin with the phrase “Upon completion of this activity, learners should be able to…” followed by a single, observable action verb. The guide strongly recommends against combining two actions in one outcome – each outcome should be discrete so that assessment of mastery is unambiguous.

The SMART framework for writing outcomes 🔗

A reliable structure for writing outcomes is the SMART framework. As outlined by Johns Hopkins University’s Office of the Provost, each outcome should be:

• Specific – clearly states the skill, knowledge, or attitude to be demonstrated
• Measurable – uses an action verb observable through assessment (test, project, demonstration, etc.)
• Achievable – realistic given the prerequisite knowledge students bring and the resources available
• Relevant – appropriate to the course, program, and students’ professional or academic trajectory
• Time-bound – specifies when the student should achieve the outcome (by end of module, by end of semester, etc.)

A weak outcome might read: “Students will understand data privacy law.” A SMART version reads: “By the end of this module, students will be able to identify at least three obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation and explain their application to a given business scenario.” The second version tells students exactly what is expected – and tells the instructor exactly what to assess.

Practical rules for writing outcomes 🔗

The University of Arkansas Teaching Innovation and Pedagogical Support recommends that course-level outcomes are broad, typically three to five in total, while lesson-level outcomes are more specific and numerous – each building toward mastery of the course-level outcome. Every lesson-level outcome should be written at or below the cognitive level of the course-level outcome it supports. This creates coherent scaffolding: earlier lessons lay the groundwork; later lessons build toward the highest complexity the course requires.

Using a Bloom’s verb at the right taxonomic level is therefore not a bureaucratic exercise – it is a design decision. The verb you select signals to students what kind of thinking they need to practice, and to assessors what kind of evidence to look for.

Importance of learning outcomes in assessment 🔗

Learning outcomes are the linchpin of effective course design because everything else – teaching activities, instructional resources, and assessment tasks – should be chosen to help students achieve them. This is the core idea behind constructive alignment, a model introduced by Professor John Biggs in 1996 and now foundational to higher education quality standards worldwide.

Biggs describes constructive alignment as starting with the outcomes to be learned and then aligning both teaching and assessment to those outcomes. The outcome statement contains a verb – an action – that students must perform to demonstrate learning. That same verb should appear in the learning activity and in the assessment task. If a learning outcome requires students to analyze, then the assessment must ask them to analyze, not merely recall or describe.

The University of New South Wales Teaching Gateway frames the relationship clearly: learning outcomes prescribe what students are expected to demonstrate, and the assessment plan shows how they will demonstrate it. These two elements must run in parallel. An outcome targeting professional communication skills cannot be validly assessed by a task that only measures academic writing – the disconnect renders the assessment invalid.

Alignment protects students and instructors alike 🔗

Poor alignment has real consequences. As the University of Waterloo Centre for Teaching Excellence explains, misalignment occurs when students are assessed at a cognitive level different from what the outcome targets – for instance, when an outcome calls for analysis but the assessment only tests recall. Students end up working toward the wrong target, and instructors end up measuring something they never intended to teach.

Alignment also has a motivational dimension. Queen Mary University of London’s Academy notes that students naturally focus on what they believe will be assessed. When outcomes, teaching, and assessment are tightly aligned, students are effectively guided toward the right learning activities – they cannot “escape” the intended learning, as Biggs puts it. There is no hidden curriculum, no mismatch between what is taught and what is tested.

From course design to program accountability 🔗

The importance of learning outcomes extends beyond individual courses. When outcomes are systematically assessed at course level, they can be shown to contribute to program-level graduate standards. Wilfrid Laurier University’s Teaching and Learning guide describes how building alignment between outcomes and assessment enables instructors to demonstrate to students, employers, professional bodies, and accreditation agencies that graduates have achieved the competencies the program claims to develop.

This is not merely an administrative concern. Institutions that commit to this kind of outcomes-based evidence demonstrate that their programs are producing graduates with the skills employers actually need – a standard increasingly demanded by accreditation bodies and quality assurance agencies globally. As ACCSC’s 2022 monograph on assessing student learning outcomes makes clear, having confidence in what graduates can do requires institutions to commit to curricula that align with program objectives and assessment processes focused on improving student learning.

Using an alignment matrix 🔗

One practical tool for maintaining alignment across a course is an alignment matrix – a table that maps each assessment task to the learning outcome it measures. As outlined by the University of Michigan’s Online Teaching resources, this matrix helps instructors quickly identify whether any outcome is left unassessed, or whether any assessment does not connect to an outcome. It also ensures that grade weightings reflect the relative importance of outcomes, so students can allocate their effort accordingly. Done at the course design stage rather than after the fact, this process prevents the uncomfortable compromises that arise when assessments and outcomes are developed separately.

Putting it all together 🔗

Setting learning outcomes is not a paperwork exercise – it is the intellectual core of course design. A well-written outcome tells students where they are headed, gives instructors a measurable target, and ensures that assessment is testing what teaching actually aimed to develop. Starting with Bloom’s Taxonomy to select the right cognitive level, applying the SMART criteria to write precise statements, and then using those statements to drive both teaching and assessment decisions creates a coherent, fair, and educationally sound course. When every component of a course – outcomes, instruction, and assessment – works toward the same goal, students are more focused, assessments are more valid, and the evidence of learning becomes genuinely meaningful.

What do you think? If you were redesigning a course you have taught before, which of your existing assessments would pass the alignment test – and which would reveal a mismatch with what you actually intended students to learn? And how might writing more precise outcomes change the way students approach their study from day one?

References

1. https://tltc.umd.edu/instructors/resources/assessment-alignment-outcomes
2. https://www.bloomstaxonomy.net/
3. https://www.valamis.com/hub/blooms-taxonomy
4. https://bocatc.org/newsroom/blooms-taxonomy-developing-measurable-learning-objectives/
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5944406/
6. https://provost.jhu.edu/education/institutional-assessment/assessment-at-jhu/assessment-measures/writing-effective-and-measurable-learning-objectives/
7. https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy/
8. https://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/constructive-alignment/
9. https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/aligning-assessment-learning-outcomes
10. https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/aligning-outcomes-assessments-and-instruction
11. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/queenmaryacademy/educators/resources/curriculum-design/constructive-alignment/
12. https://researchcentres.wlu.ca/teaching-and-learning/planning/aligning-assessments-with-outcomes.html
13. https://www.accsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ACCSC-Monograph-Design-FINAL_hi-res.pdf
14. https://onlineteaching.umich.edu/articles/alignment-of-your-assessments-and-learning-objectives/