Understanding your Learning Outcomes using Topic, Focus, Instruction

Why don't we use everyday language, for example, and one of the reasons is that the learning outcomes need to use specific language a requirement for universities. But also there are technical requirements for nursing and other professional fields.

Learning outcomes will state what you have learned in the module,  what you should have learned and you're expected to evidence that in your assignments. So when you're writing assignment, it is very important to reference the learning outcomes or

include the learning outcomes and address them. Your assignment is an opportunity to showcase your learning. And I use the analogy of a shop window. So if you think about your learning as being the shop, this is everything you've learned on your course. and  it's contained within the shop. Your assignment is like the shop window. And what you're doing is you're pulling out the most relevant and interesting items and arranging them in a way that is  interesting to your audience. So in this case, it would be your assessor. So you're taking your learning, and you're cherry picking the most useful and interesting bits of your learning and structuring them in a way that feels coherent for your reader or the assessor. So we're going to look at a tool to help you decipher your learning outcomes. So on the right hand side, you'll see a box with a couple of learning outcomes. And on the left hand side, you'll see a tool. It's called 'Topic Focus, Instruction. So the topic is the main area of learning from the learning outcome, the focus is the aspect. So quite often in higher education, you're not expected to write everything, you know about a topic, but focus on a specific area and think about how those things intersect. Your instruction is what you are meant to do. And depending on the instruction might mean that you have to do different things. So for example, if you're asked to reflect, that's different from demonstrating or critically evaluating.  So here's an example. And what I've done is I've highlighted in green, the topic words, I've underlined the focus words and I've put in bold  and in red the instruction words. So in this example here, the main area that you're asked to think about is self-awareness, but they don't want you to talk about everything that you've learned about self-awareness.They want you to focus on your nursing values and behaviors. So your topic, the broad topic is self awareness, but the focus is nursing values and behaviors. And you'd be expected to identify those nursing values and behaviors and think about what you've learned about yourself in relation to those things. So you have two ideas and how they come together your instruction words which are in bold and in red  show you what you need to do. So in this situation, you're reflecting on your insights.So you're expected to think about what you've learned about yourself and then apply that to future learning. Any questions? If you have any further questions, you can find Learning Development  via the skills hub or the student hub. There's also a tab on the academic skills for nurses website, close to the top, which says book a tutorial. So if you would like to spend some time discussing this or anything else, you could do that with a learning development tutor or a mentor.