Developing a new course - or revising an existing course - often begins with drafting course goals and learning outcomes.

• Course goals describe what you want to teach your students
• Learning outcomes describe what you can see them do as a result of the course.

For example, one goal of a literary theory course might be to familiarize students with various schools of thought and approaches to literature; a learning outcome for that same course might call for students to identify and compare the assumptions about meaning or language within three or four different schools of literary criticism.

Clearly written course goals and learning outcomes provide a roadmap through the course content. As the instructor designs the course, the course goals guide selection of material and the learning objectives guide the selection of ways to assess student learning.

Strategies and Resources

• Writing learning objectives (a pdf file from University of Tennessee-Memphis) explains why and how to write clear learning objectives
• Writing learning outcomes using Bloom's Taxonomy (from Penn State) 

Instructional Design and Development

• Writing course goals and learning objectives for online, hybrid, or web-enhanced courses.
• Identify and design learning activities and assessment tools to help online students achieve learning objectives.

Office for Teaching, Learning and Assessment

• Resources on writing learning objectives
• List of learning goals for schools, departments and liberal studies domains and for the university