Workshop Week 10

5 Steps to writing ILOs

It can be useful to consider using the following 5-step process in designing ILOs:

1. Decide on the Purpose
2. Identify the Content
3. Select the Appropriate Verb
4. Add the Context (when necessary)
5. Ensure Clarity

Below is more information about each of these steps, with reference to the examples on the Components of an ILO page.

Step 1: Purpose

The first step in developing learning outcomes for a unit of study is to identify the purpose of the unit. This can be done by considering and answering the following questions:

• Why is this unit being offered?
• What is it that students need to learn in this unit so that they can progress through the course and achieve the Course Learning Outcomes? (i.e., where does what students learn in this unit fit within the whole course structure?)
• If one of your students was asked what they learnt in your unit, what would you like the student to say?
• What specific intellectual and practical skills will a student leave the unit with that they lacked when they started?
• What will every student who passes this unit know, understand and be able to do?

Some examples of purpose for different units:

Example Purpose 1:

Students will understand Newton’s three laws of motion, and the revolution these were in the understanding and explanation of motion. They will be able to explain the concept of objects in linear and in rotational motion. They will understand the relationships between motion, force and energy.

Example Purpose 2:

Students will learn about anatomy and basic functions. They will learn about clinical scenarios, and how to get the information needed to identify abnormalities.

Example Purpose 3:

Students will understand critical reflection, and how it can be used to evaluate and improve their practice. They will know what the four lenses that can be used to evaluate their teaching are, and will use them to review multiple aspects of their own and others’ practice.

Once you have clarified the purposes of the unit, organise your ideas into 2 to 6 key purposes (3 or 4 is more common). These need to be written in way that is both measurable and easily understood by students. To ensure this, intended learning outcomes (ILOs) should be written in a way that specifies 

the verb at the appropriate level of understanding or of performance intended; the topic content the verb is meant to address, the object of the verb in other words; the context of the content discipline in which the verb is to be deployed (Biggs & Tang, 2011, p. 125).

The following steps provide guidance on how to achieve this.

Step 2: Content

In developing each intended learning outcome for a unit, it is recommended that you start by defining the content that the student will learn within the unit, and which is defined within the purposes previously identified. When more than one of the identified purposes contain the same content, it is appropriate to merge these into a single ILO.
Looking at the given examples of a purpose for each unit, the content within each could be defined as:

ILO Example 1, content:

Newton’s 3 laws of motion – what they are, impact they had, the concept of objects in linear and in rotational motion, the relationships between motion, force and energy

ILO Example 2, content:

Anatomy, basic functions, clinical scenarios

ILO Example 3, content:

Critical reflection, four lenses of teaching evaluation

Step 3: Verb

Once the content has been defined, consider the level of cognitive activity with which the student will be expected to engage. That is, what level of thinking do you want students to be using in relation to the content? In an intended learning outcome, this level of cognitive engagement can be expressed with a verb. This identifies what the student is expected to do with the content. To help you in selecting an appropriate verb that communicates the cognitive level, you might use a taxonomy of learning behaviour. Two of these which are particularly helpful in considering levels of cognition are the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982), and Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson, Krathwohl, & Bloom, 2001). Other factors which affect the best choice of verb include the location of the unit in the course, and whether the knowledge is declarative or functional.

Location in the Course

When considering these taxonomies and what your expectations of students are, the location of the unit within the broader course, and the Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) will be quite important. For example, it is likely that a first-year, first semester unit, would have expectations of a lower level of cognitive activity, a simpler context, or a less complex set of content than a second or third year unit. It is also important to review the CLOs to determine the level of cognitive activity expected of students at completion of the course as a whole, and the way in which your unit needs to contribute to students’ development of these.

Declarative or Functional Knowledge

In selecting the most appropriate verb for your ILO, it is also vital to consider whether students are expected to know about the content (declarative knowledge), or whether they are expected to exercise control over problems and decisions that involve the content (functioning knowledge). Put more simply, do you want students to tell you what they know (declarative), or do you want them to show you how they can use it (functioning)? It is important that each ILO makes clear which of these two types of knowledge is expected, and it is typically the verb which is used to do this.

Taxonomies of learning objectives with useful verb lists

SOLO Taxonomy

The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy is organised into 5 levels of understanding: pre-structural, uni-structural, multi-structural, relational and extended abstract. An elegant visual representation of these levels can be found on James Atherton’s website. A poster designed by Nick Denton to help school students understand the levels provides a different graphical representation, and includes a number of verbs that might be used in an intended learning outcome at each level. The diagram on John Biggs’ website also provides a list of verbs which might be used to communicate the level of complexity with which students are expected to engage with your content.

Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy

Anderson, Krathwohl, and Bloom’s (2001) revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives organises itself along two dimensions – cognitive processes and knowledge. The cognitive processes dimension contains 6 levels of complexity: remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, and create. The knowledge dimension contains four categories: factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive. This taxonomy assists you to think about both the complexity of cognitive processes expected of the students, and the type of knowledge they are engaging with. It may be useful to revisit the content you have identified and consider where it fits in the knowledge dimension. Rex Heer (2009) provides a useful interactive model that combines both dimensions, and suggests simple learning objectives that might align with each dimensional intersection. There are plenty of other resources available online that provide graphical representations of this revision of Bloom’s taxonomy – if you enter the key words bloom, revised and taxonomy into a Google image search, pages of results will be displayed.

Psychomotor Domain Taxonomies

For those working in language teaching and motor-area skills related disciplines, such as engineering or dance, taxonomies addressing the psychomotor domains could be useful. Ferris and Aziz’s (2005) taxonomy for engineering, for example, contains a hierarchy of 7 categories, summarised as: recognition, handling, basic operation, competent operation, expert operation, planning of operations, and evaluation and planning improvement. See also Dave (1970), Simpson (1974), and Harrow (1972) for variations of psychomotor domain taxonomies.

Biggs and Tang (2011) provide useful tables of verbs from both the SOLO and Bloom’s revised taxonomies on pages 124 and 125 of Teaching for Quality Learning at University.

Examples

In our first example, we considered the purpose of a first-year, first semester unit. In reading the purpose, it seems as though the focus is mostly on the knowing of the laws and related concepts. The purpose does not suggest that students will be required to use the knowledge. Therefore, verbs that communicate the expectation of declarative knowledge would be most appropriate. As the unit occurs at the start of the course, the highest level of cognitive activity might not yet be expected, but as the content is likely a requisite for future units, a deep level of understanding may be required. Therefore, some possibilities for appropriate verbs might include, from lowest to highest:

ILO Example 1, verb:

describe, explain, generalise

The second example is also a first-year unit, typically offered in second semester, with a first-semester unit as a pre-requisite, and itself serving as a pre-requisite for multiple second year units. The type of knowledge required is functioning. Some possible verbs might be:

ILO Example 2, verb:

apply, dramatise, interpret, solve problem, assess

The third example, from a post-graduate course, requires functioning knowledge and the highest level of cognitive activity. Appropriate verbs therefore, might be:

ILO Example 3, verb:

Reflect and improve, critically reflect, apply a process

Step 4: Context

When you have identified what the students will learn, and what they will do with it, the next step is to define the context in which students will be able to do the verb with the content. 
When selecting the appropriate context, it is important to consider the place the unit occupies within the course structure, and its contribution to student development towards CLOs, just as when selecting verbs. It may be one or the other of these two elements of an ILO that defines and communicates the complexity of the knowledge, skill or understanding required by students at this point of the course. Mapping to CLOs will assist in identifying the most suitable context, as will discussing with colleagues the contexts of the ILOs in other units offered at a similar point in the course. 
Context helps to define and put limits around what you are going to teach the students within the unit. The identification of a context is most important at Bloom’s revised level of apply and above. If the level of performance or understanding is sufficiently identified by the verb and content, and the context is inherent, then there may be no need to directly specify a context. Additionally, when there is an expectation of deployment free of context or in multiple contexts, then particular context need not be specified in the learning outcomes. This is of particular relevance for foundational and theoretical concepts, which students may be expected to be able to apply in multiple contexts.

Examples

The first example provided, for instance, is an example of an ILO where the verb and the content provide sufficient information for students to understand the expectation of them without inclusion of a context.

ILO Example 1, context:

Explain the concept of objects in linear and rotational motion and the relationships between motion, force and energy with reference to Newton’s three laws of motion.

For our second example, however, further clarity is needed to identify for students how, where, when, and in what circumstances or situations they will be expected to deploy the chosen verb. Depending on the verb that is chosen, appropriate contextual information might include:

ILO Example 2, context:

identification of abnormalities or clinical scenarios

The third example requires a very specific personal context:

ILO Example 3, context:

your own practice(s)

Step 5: Clarity

To ensure that the ILO is well-written, the final step is to put the three elements together, and ensure that the whole makes sense – not to you as an expert, but to your students, who are novices in the area. This means that you will need to remove any jargon or discipline specific language, and replace them with plain language. For second and third year units, however, it would be appropriate to use language that students are familiar with from previous compulsory units in the course. 

When analysing your ILOs for clarity, ask yourself, “if English was my second language, would I be able to grasp the meaning of the learning outcomes expected?”, “Have I avoided unnecessarily complex language and unexplained terminology?”. 

You may find using a readability test useful in determining how easy your newly written ILOs are to understand. Read-able.com is an example of a useful tool to check readability of your ILOs. Our examples returned the result “should be easily understood by 18 to 19 year olds”, which is probably at the highest level you would want.

In addition to checking readability, it is recommended that you seek peer review of your ILOs from your colleagues. Often the best colleagues for peer review of ILOs are those from a different discipline as they are more likely to identify discipline specific language that means little or something different to them.