Learning outcomes are measurable skills, knowledge, or attitudes students should gain from a course or an assignment. They should be clear both for a course and for an assignment. Ideally, assignments are structured so that students can build complex skills step by step. In reality, as they learn new skills, some of the older skills may temporarily, suffer. We commonly see this with grammar and other basic skills; as students learn new forms of writing or focus attention on difficult new content, their grammar may suffer. The best response is to encourage plenty of practice, so skills become ingrained, with editing and revision, for example, by having students work on drafts in class or by having early due dates for drafts that get formative feedback.

Learning Outcomes for Courses

Common, but by no means exclusive, goals for W or C courses would be to develop the ability to:

• Communicate with various audiences (e.g., lay, expert, managerial, general public)
• Think critically, or view ideas or events from different perspectives
• Argue effectively for one side, or for a compromise position
• Design documents for readability and usefulness
• Learn to appreciate a subject aesthetically or ethically
• Evaluate and compare events, texts, ideas, or objects
• Express a personal or organizational stance
• Critique a text, argument, object, or idea

Below are exemplary outcomes statements taken from W and C Course Syllabi.

Learning Outcomes for Assignments

Another way to view the knowledge/skills gained by communication is to consider what rhetoricians call aims, or an underlying purpose. Communicative acts may have various aims, including:

• To explore (think from different perspectives, consider alternative views, create new perspectives)
• To explain (explore underlying principles, demonstrate, or teach)
• To persuade (argue for a position or stance, propose a course of action)
• To express (make clear a stance, emotion, or identity)
• To entertain
• To evaluate (provide a critique or assessment)
• To learn (rehearse information, synthesize information, or acquire new information)

A communicative act might have one of these aims (or a variation thereof) as a primary goal; on the other hand, some have multiple aims.
Rhetoricians sometimes classify communication according to modes, or types, which also provide a way of thinking about possible learning outcomes for assignments:

• Exposition (Explanation) Description
• Argument
• Narration
• Process (Steps or Stages)
• Comparison/Contrast (Likeness/Difference)
• Analysis
• Definition (Categorical Proposition, or, x is y)
• Cause/Effect (Consequences)
• Analogy
• Evaluation

Several modes may be present in a given document or speech, but one may dominate. One advantage of using the modes to develop learning outcomes is that many rhetoric texts provide help in writing based on the modes.
For example, the typical handbook will include sections on writing a "Comparison/Contrast" essay or an "Extended Definition"; some writing textbooks also provide samples of writing that primarily demonstrate one of these modes. A proposal might define a problem (definition mode); assert the consequences of inaction (cause/effect); or explain how a similar problem has been solved (analogy. The document's aim would primarily be to persuade, but it could also explain and perhaps evaluate.
Consider a possible series of assignments leading to a formal proposal:

Type of Document	Purpose	Mode
Brief oral presentation to class defining a problem	Explore/ Explain	Definition
Annotated bibliography investigating the current state of knowledge regarding the problem	Explain/Learn/Explore	Description
Letter to a person of authority explaining the consequences of acting or not acting to correct a problem	Persuade	Cause-Effect
Formal report to an audience capable of action, defining the problem and its current state, suggesting a solution, and arguing for its feasibility and its necessity	Persuade	Analogy/Cause-Effect

 

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Additional Resources

Walvoord, Barbara, and Virginia Johnson-Anderson, "Making Assignments Worth Grading" in Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment, pp. 17-26 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998).

Angelo, Thomas A. and K. Patricia Cross. "The Teaching Goals Inventory in Classroom Assessment Techniques. pp. 13-23 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993).  

Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge, blog by Katherine Miller, 2018.

TAMU Undergraduate Student Learning Outcomes