Developing Course Learning Outcomes

Designing or refreshing a course can feel overwhelming. Clear course learning outcomes give you a starting point for making decisions about what students will learn and how they will demonstrate that learning. Course learning outcomes describe the knowledge, skills, ways of thinking, and forms of judgment students will have developed by the end of your course. They guide decisions about learning activities and assessment, making the course expectations more visible to students.

Key strategies for writing outcomes

Building on the influential work of Wiggins and McTighe (2005), focus your learning outcomes on the learning that matters most in your course: what students should know, think, do, or be able to apply in their field or discipline, and what they should be able to carry forward into later courses, professional practice, or other contexts.

1. Start with the Learning

When writing your course learning outcomes, start by thinking about where the course fits, who is taking it, and what matters most for students to learn. Consider how your course introduces, reinforces, extends, or integrates learning across the program.

Ask yourself:

• Where does your course sit within the program? Is it introductory or advanced, required or elective, or does it serve students from multiple programs or disciplinary backgrounds?
• Who are your learners? What prior knowledge, experience, and academic preparation are they likely to bring?
• What learning is most important for students to develop by the end of the course?
• How does that learning connect with the broader program? Does it introduce, reinforce, extend, or integrate program-level learning outcomes?
• What should students still be able to understand, do, or apply long after the course has ended?

2. Keep it Focused

Course learning outcomes focus on the major learning that students should achieve by the end of the course. We recommend that you write a manageable set of outcomes that communicate the course’s overall purpose and expectations. An outcome can bring together learning across several topics; you do not need a separate outcome for every topic or activity.

As a helpful guide, review your outcomes by asking:

• Do they capture the course’s essential learning?
• Is the number manageable for planning learning activities and assessments?
• Are they specific enough to make the expected learning clear and assessable, without becoming a list of isolated details?
• Have I avoided unnecessary repetition?
• Can students achieve them within the available time, considering their starting points and the practice and support they will need?

When combined with lesson planning, the goal is to create opportunities throughout the course for students to practice toward these outcomes and use feedback to improve. More specific lesson, module, or assignment goals then guide the learning that contributes to the course outcomes.

3. Build Clear Learning Outcomes

You can build clear, concise, and precise learning outcomes using a simple, predictable structure:

Stem + Action verb + Content + Context

• Stem: Establishes the timeframe for the learning. For example, "By the end of this course, students will be able to..."
• Action verb: Specifies what students will do to show their learning. Ask: What will students need to do for you to know they have achieved the outcome?
• Content: Specifies the knowledge, concept, skill, or practice students will work with.
• Context: Adds useful detail about the conditions, audience, disciplinary setting, scope, or criteria for the learning. Not every outcome needs this element; include it when it makes the expectation more precise.

4. Describe Meaningful Evidence of Learning

Learning taxonomies can provide different lenses for thinking about what students are learning and how they might demonstrate that learning. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy is most commonly used to conceptualize cognitive learning, with later taxonomy work addressing affective and psychomotor learning. Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning takes a broader, integrated view of learning and asks instructors to consider how learning connects, how it changes students’ perspectives, and how it continues beyond the course.

Using Learning Taxonomies

Learning taxonomies can help you clarify the kinds of learning you want students to develop and the evidence that would show they have achieved it. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy focuses on cognitive learning. Related work also addressed affective learning, while psychomotor learning was developed through separate taxonomies by other scholars. Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning takes a broader, integrated view of learning and its longer-term significance for students.

Choose the taxonomy that best fits your course, discipline, and intended learning outcomes. Because meaningful learning takes different forms across disciplines, the language and evidence used in your outcomes will vary as well.

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy	Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning
Focus: Commonly used to describe different levels of cognitive learning. Later related taxonomy work also addresses affective and psychomotor learning	Focus: Considers learning across multiple, interconnected “dimensions,” including knowledge, application, integration, the human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn
Structure: Hierarchical, moving from remembering and understanding toward applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating	Structure: Non-hierarchical and relational, with the six dimensions interacting and reinforcing one another.
Helps you consider: The complexity of the learning that students are expected to demonstrate	Helps you consider: How learning connects to other knowledge, experience, perspectives, and future learning.
Useful for: Clarifying the kind and level of learning an outcome asks students to demonstrate	Useful for: Considering learning that extends beyond cognitive performance, including integration, self-awareness, motivation, and learning how to learn.
Key question: What kind of learning are students being asked to demonstrate?	Key question: What kinds of learning and longer-term growth are we trying to support?

Examples across disciplines:

The examples below show how vague outcomes can be made clearer and more specific across different disciplines. The Bloom and Fink references show how each taxonomy can offer a different lens on the learning described. You do not need to classify every outcome using both.

5. Final check

Before finalizing your course outcomes, review them as a set. Look for a clear picture of what students should know, be able to do, and demonstrate by the end of the course, without unnecessary overlap or gaps. 

Strong learning outcomes should:

• describe learning that is important in the course and discipline
• be clear enough to guide students’ learning
• connect, where appropriate, to broader program learning outcomes
• be appropriate for the level of the course
• be realistic and achievable within the time available
• be supported by meaningful opportunities for students to practice and develop their learning
• be assessable in ways that provide credible evidence of student learning

Learning outcomes in the age of Generative AI

GenAI can quickly produce polished essays, complex code, and research summaries. As some traditional assessments no longer accurately measure student understanding, instructors are exploring a fundamental question: How do we define what it means to "know" or "do" something in our disciplines today?

Reframing your course learning outcomes can help you guide students through this shifting landscape while keeping critical thinking at the heart of their education.

• Focus on the learning journey. When AI can automate final assignments, your learning outcomes can pivot to highlight the step-by-step learning journey. Consider designing your course around iterative drafting, progressive revisions, and ongoing feedback. When students use GenAI, encourage them to actively direct and evaluate its output and to reflect critically on how the tool supports their progress.
• Target deeper thinking over task completion. Because AI easily handles lower-level tasks, you might aim your learning outcomes toward higher-level thinking. To get a clear picture of what your students have learned — as opposed to what AI can generate — consider incorporating real-time assessments such as oral evaluations, presentations, lab demonstrations or live coding. You can ask students to apply what they have learned to novel, ambiguous problems that AI cannot easily solve. If you introduce new formats, such as oral presentations, plan space in your syllabus to help students develop those specific skills.
• Weave AI literacy into your curriculum. As generative tools become everyday fixtures across professional fields, guiding students on how to work with AI is an important part of preparing them for the future. Well-rounded learning outcomes balance technical skills — like prompt engineering and understanding tool limits — with ethical discernment, including GenAI output bias, copyright, privacy, and environmental and social impacts.
• Pace tool use to build core human skills. Researchers Evan Risko and Sam Gilbert coined the term "cognitive offloading" to describe the practice of relying on external tools for thinking tasks — a concept that experts like Jim Lodge have applied directly to GenAI. Giving students access to GenAI before they master foundational concepts may lead them to skip essential practice. However, you can use GenAI as a temporary scaffold, for example, by offering sample ideas or initial feedback that you gradually taper off as students build confidence. Clear guidance and thoughtful modeling ensure that your students continue the core thinking required to meet your learning outcomes.

Learn more about AI in Teaching and Learning

Putting it into practice

1. Evidence: What evidence would convince you that your students have achieved each learning outcome? Is that expectation clear to students?
2. Connection: Do your learning outcomes help students recognize how your course connects to their broader academic, professional, and personal growth?
3. Access: Do your outcomes create expectations that could introduce unnecessary barriers, or can students demonstrate the intended learning in equitable ways?
4. Alignment: How will your learning activities and assessments help students develop and demonstrate the learning described in your outcomes?

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Learn more

Biggs, J., Tang, C., & Kennedy, G. (2022). Teaching for quality learning at university (5th ed.). Open University Press.

Centre for Teaching & Learning (2024). A Crossroad between Bloom’s and Fink’s Taxonomies: Guiding Verbs for Developing Learning Outcomes. University of British Columbia Okanagan.

Clark, L.A. (2025). Reframing Bloom’s for the Age of AI: A White Paper for Future-Ready Educators. Anthology.

Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating Significant Learning Experiences, Revised and Updated: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. In Creating Significant Learning Experiences. John Wiley & Sons.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. Theory into practice, 41(4), 212-218.

Lodge, J. M., Yang, S., Furze, L., & Dawson, P. (2023). It’s not like a calculator, so what is the relationship between learners and generative artificial intelligence? Learning: Research and Practice, 9(2), 117–124. 

Lovett, M. C., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Ambrose, S. A., & Norman, M. K. (2023). How learning works: Eight research-based principles for smart teaching (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Purvis, A., & Winwood, B. (2023). A guide to writing learning outcomes in higher education. Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive. 

Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive offloading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(9), 676–688.

University at Buffalo. Fink's significant learning outcomes. Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation.

University of Waterloo. Bloom's taxonomy. Centre for Teaching Excellence.

Wiggins, G.P. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. (2nd Ed.). Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.