Developing and assessing learning outcomes has always been a challenge for academic and teaching practitioners, spanning all disciplines and institutes. At this time, the use of ‘learning outcomes’ as cornerstones for quality learning is not a foreign concept to anyone who works in UK higher education but this was not always the case. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) was only established in 1997, in an aim to harmonise the standard of higher education and set quality assurance processes for all institutions (QAA, 2024).
Allan Davies tried to assist educators in arts and design who were writing assessment briefs using learning outcomes for the first time, by creating a guide on formulating clear, measurable learning outcomes and assessment criteria, addressing the challenges of articulating abstract concepts like ‘creativity’ and ‘originality’ within competency-based education frameworks (2000). He outlined that some of the key challenges of crafting learning outcomes for arts and design courses were firstly defining abstract concepts, avoiding ambiguity to avoid misunderstanding in expectations, balancing specificity with flexibility – which is seen as a crucial part of learning in arts – and maybe most importantly for the higher education sector as whole, ensuring consistency to maintain standards across institutions.
From my experience and background in science education, I agree with the challenges mentioned and I would add that most of these are challenges faced by educators across science, technology and engineering subjects as well. Concepts used in this subjects are much more well defined and less abstract than in arts, but arguably in an era where higher education is geared towards solving societal issues and providing employability skills to students, creativity, innovation and originality are concepts that are taught in these more ‘technical’ subjects.
A very interesting observation that came out from this report and workshops that followed it up, was that the requirement for learning objectives to be based on ‘measurable’ actions created more challenges than sought to resolve (Davies, 2012). The practitioners argued that the use of terms like ‘explain’, ‘analyse’ etc. are not inherently measurable but depend on the students (and teachers!) understanding of the discipline and whether they are well versed in the specific language of each discipline. This was interesting to me as, as a rule teachers including myself are still encouraged, if not forced, to use specific, measurable and actionable verbs when crafting learning outcomes. This is not to say that we should revert to less specific terminology, but it made me rethink the level-appropriateness of each ‘verb’ used in learning outcomes beyond the usual taxonomies usually used in education – I aim from now to take into consideration the somewhat unique multidisciplinarity of the course I teach in, the educational background and ‘language’ familiarity of the students.
References:
Davies, A. (2012) Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem? Available at: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/networks/issue-18-july-2012/learning-outcomes-and-assessment-criteria-in-art-and-design.-whats-the-recurring-problem (Accessed: 09 March 2025).
Davies, A. (2000) Effective Assessment in Art and Design: Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design. University of the Arts London. Available at: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/629/ (Accessed: 09 March 2025).
QAA (2024) The UK’s expert quality body for tertiary education. Available at: https://www.qaa.ac.uk/about-us# (Accessed: 8 March 2025).