Course Learning Outcomes

Why Develop CLOs?

Course learning outcomes (CLOs) state your goals for student learning and understanding and provide the educational foundation for each course.

For instructors, they answer the question: What do I want students to know, demonstrate, or master by the end of this course?

While best practice encourages periodic review and revision of course learning outcomes, potential disruptions leading to flexible course modalities increase the need to revisit your CLOs. In times of disruption, faculty and instructors should consider structuring their courses for online learning, adding back in face-to-face elements, and using CLOs as a guide for doing so—keeping in mind that some students may not be on campus at all and that classes may move from face-to-face to online on short notice.

CLOs Help Students Understand Expectations

The first step for preparing courses for online delivery is to clearly articulate your CLOs so that online students understand what is expected of them as well as the criteria by which they will be assessed and graded.

This is especially true for the material covered and assessed during periods of online instruction. Rapid transitions can be stressful for students, and instructors can help reduce that stress by clearly communicating with students the:

  • Course learning outcomes
  • Assessments you will be using
  • Learning activities that will support achievement of the outcomes

When possible, early communication will also allow students to anticipate and plan for distance learning in less than ideal environments.

Reviewing and Revising CLOs

Below are factors that should be considered as you review and revise your course(s) and/or CLOs. If you need assistance in developing robust CLOs, please see step three.

Step One: Consider Level of Students

Reflect on the background and experiences of the students as they enter the course. Are their experiences fairly uniform or heterogeneous? Have they been exposed to elements of your course previously or will this likely be the first time they have seen the topics?

Step Two: Consider How Your Course(s) Fit Within Programs

Course level learning outcomes and program learning outcomes are inherently connected since programs (i.e. majors, minors, and clusters) build the capacity to achieve intended learning outcomes through a combination of courses and learning experiences. Knowing how the learning outcomes for your course(s) are connected to learning outcomes for their related program(s) helps with:

  • Identifying essential course learning outcomes
  • Engaging in course design (and re-designs)
  • Developing appropriate assessment strategies to inform teaching and learning

Knowing how your CLOs fits with program learning outcomes (PLOs) is especially important for courses that support foundational core learning for a program or that serve as prerequisites for other courses. If you have not recently reviewed your PLOs, we suggest you review them as you develop your CLOs. The PLOs for all undergraduate degree programs in AS&E are available via the Office of Educational Effectiveness Resources website. or the Excel file can also be downloaded directly at AS&E Undergraduate Degree Major Program Learning Outcomes (XLS).

Step Three: Develop and/or Revise Course Learning Objectives

What Should Students Know, Demonstrate, or Master

Vanderbilt University’s provides guidance on using a template to develop CLOs. Using this , consider the questions formatted in red font. Depending on the complexity of your course, you may need to consider these questions several times for your course since there are often several learning outcomes of interest.

Note that:

  • Learning outcomes are not usually content-specific. They do not describe the topics/content the students will study in the course, but rather the skills students will demonstrate after successfully completing the course.
  • Learning outcomes should focus on the overarching concepts, skills, abilities, behaviors, or attitudes that you wish the students demonstrate at the end of the course.
Review Bloom's Taxonomy

provides a list of action verbs often used in writing CLOs that are organized by the complexity of the cognition. Best practices encourage building your CLOs across various levels of complexity to ensure students are learning at multiple levels of cognition. ()

Write Your Learning Outcomes

Faculty and instructors should write the learning outcomes in a format that uses action verbs and uses language that students (and those outside the field) will be able to understand.

"Students who successfully complete this course will be able to: (list an action verb that aligns with the specific knowledge or skills you wish students to acquire and then state the knowledge or skills)."

Examples from the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation at the University of Toronto:

Example 1: By the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • describe the research process in social interventions
  • evaluate critically the quality of research by others
  • formulate research questions designed to test, refine, and build theories
  • identify and demonstrate facility in research designs and data collection strategies that are most appropriate to a particular research project
  • formulate a complete and logical plan for data analysis that will adequately answer the research questions and probe alternative explanations
  • interpret research findings and draw appropriate conclusions

Example 2: By the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • identify and describe the major literary movements of the 20th century
  • perform close readings of literary texts
  • evaluate a literary work based on selected and articulated standards

For additional information and examples, see the

Make Sure CLOs are Measurable

You will need to think of at least one method, and preferably several methods, to assess students' mastery of each of the CLOs.

Best practices, outlined on our assessment page, suggest assessing each CLO incrementally and throughout the semester. This reduces reliance on high-stake exams that can be difficult to administer online and that may not provide strong correlation to student achievement of the CLOs.

The results of the assessments will also serve to inform future review and/or revisions of your CLOs.

Resources

There are many books, articles and websites that go into the educational theory and detailed procedures of developing CLOs. For the purposes of this guide, we are using material from:

  • Vanderbilt Center for Teaching (Bowen, Ryan S., (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Accessed [11 June 2020] at
  • from Jay McTighe & Associates Consulting Accessed at

Additional resources:

  • related resources from NILOA (National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment) by NILOA coach, Joe Levy”
  • Verbs that are useful for writing learning outcomes:
    • by Cliff Adelman