Student Learning Assessment

Best Practices for Writing SLOs

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) articulate or state what you want your students to learn. Rather than focusing on content/curriculum (what we want to teach) or pedagogy (how we deliver the content), the focus is on outcomes (what we want students to learn.)

SLOs can be written for different levels. For example, SLOs can be written at:

• Institutional Level SLOs (see General Education outcomes as an example)
• Program Level (at Northern we call those PSLOs)
• Course Level SLOs (these should appear on your individual syllabi)
• SLOs can be elsewhere: module level, co-curricular, dictated by an outside accreditor, and so on

Focus

SLOs must be:

• Learner centered - focused on the students in the class; not on what they were taught in the past
• Ability focused - transferable to other assignments or situations
• Measurable - you can determine if the student has met the outcome either through formal or informal assessment

Helpful Writing Tip & Examples

• Utilize Bloom’s Taxonomy (there are other taxonomies, but the goal in this exercise is to inform your verb phrase and level of expectation)

Example Course Level SLO: Evaluate sources for quality, relevance, and perspective in order to select information most appropriate for the research assignment(s). 

Example Program Level SLO: Locate, organize, analyze, and evaluate information across multiple platforms or media in order to apply that information to a defined question or problem.

*Keep in mind, there are other parts of the instructional design process. This step is only focused on writing outcomes.