How to use learning outcomes to guide your study and revision

What is a learning outcome?

Learning outcomes tell you what you’re expected to know and be able to do  by the end of a unit. The learning outcomes for each unit can be found in the handbook and on each unit’s Moodle site. Through their choice of content, activities, and assessment, educators tend to use learning outcomes as a way of guiding students. For students, these outcomes provide the prompts necessary to examine their academic and personal growth, ultimately leading to a learning process where they can test their progress and set new goals (Enomoto et al., 2022).

What are the parts of a learning outcome?

Learning outcomes contain multiple components that help identify what skills and knowledge you will need to be able to demonstrate by the end of the unit.

Learning outcomes contain three components:

  • The knowledge/skills you need to demonstrate.
  • Directive words that tell you how to demonstrate your knowledge/skills.
  • Statements that explain how the knowledge and skills will be applied (optional).

Click on the information hotspots (i) in the examples below to see how a learning outcome is structured.

Note

Student Academic Success has a number of resources tailored specifically to your learning outcomes. For example, if a learning outcome for your unit is:

Produce essays and reflections that present or reflect on the implications of a critical argument and adhere to the conventions of academic presentation.

you could consider looking at the learning resources on Learn HQ about academic writing, including understanding the essay writing, reflective writing and academic language in writing. Doing this will aid you in your efforts to do really well, and you can speak to a Learning Adviser about these topics as well.