Understanding your Learning Outcomes using Topic Focus Instruction

Video Transcription:
Hello. Welcome to this video, which is to introduce the idea of understanding your learning outcomes, in 'Introduction to In this video, we will be discussing learning outcomes.You may find the learning outcomes change for your year, but the basic principles remain the same. Please consult your assessment guidance or module handbook for your current learning outcomes.This video has been created to support 

students who have difficulty accessing the group session. The group session is activity based and designed to give you the greatest benefit. This video has been created to support that learning and not as a replacement. When it comes to understanding your Learning Outcomes, there are a few things are worth bearing in mind. The first being that learning  outcomes use very specific language. Students often ask me 

why are learning outcomes so complicated?  They're often written in language that even people that are fluent in Englishand use it every day find quite difficult to understand. The reason for this is that university degrees are very highly regulated and in particular nursing degrees have this added dimension of having regulation from your discipline. It's important.  The language that is used is very important and highly regulated. It's important to take some time to really understand the learning outcomes. Your learning outcomes will state what is learnt in your module to help you understand what you should be able to do once you have completed that learning. The learning outcomes

also help and guide you to showcase your learning in the assessment. I often use the analogy or metaphor or the image of a shop. The idea is the learning and skills and knowledge that you have developed on your module are a bit like a shop. Within the main shop, you have your ideas and your skills which you can access and share with others in the same way as when you go into a shop, you can take items from the shelf. In the back rooms, you have ideas that maybe aren't quite fully developed but are on their way, and you have the shop window, and this is where you showcase your learning. An assessment is a bit like a shop window because what you're doing is you're cherry picking key items to showcase to the assessor, to the assessor, who is in effect a shopper looking in the shop window. You're not able to show everything in your assessment, but only the things that you think will interest your assessor. It is important that you structure your knowledge in a way  that is useful to the assessor and helpful to the assessor.  To do that, you need to understand the learning outcomes so

that you can structure your response to meet them. To help you do this, you can use a tool such as Topic Focus Instruction to break down your learning outcomes or TFI for short. Topic is about the main subject area that your module or learning outcome is covering. It's important to get an idea and to be really  clear in your mind whatthe learning outcome is about. But it's very unusual to be asked to give information about everything you know on a topic, and this is where focus comes in.This is a targeted area or aspect that you need to focus on, hence the word focus. At the point where the topic and focus meet, that is the area that you need to address. There's this other word here, which is called instruction, and this tells you what you need to do. The instruction words explain  the approach that you need to take to

the knowledge. If you think about it broadly, topic and focus is about what you need to know, and instruction is about what you need to do.

Take a moment now to choose a learning outcome and break it down using the Topic, Focus, and Instruction words. Begin by identifying

which words address the topic, which words address the focus, and which words address the instruction. You may wish to pause the video to give yourself time to do this. Please restart the video when you are ready to do so. Here are the answers that I have.  You'll notice that  the instruction words which are in bold and red come at the beginning of the learning outcome. This is a very usual format for this. Occasionally, there will be instruction words within the learning outcome, but this is quite unusual. Remember, the instruction words tell you how to approach the learning. In the academic skills for nurses web pages and on the padlet. There is a sheet which explains many of the

instruction words in everyday language. The next words are Topic words, and these are for you to think about the main subject area, and these are highlighted in green or blocked out in color. The other words are focus words. This is your target area within the broader area of knowledge, and this is what you need to focus on. It is the point where this information meets that you need to focus. Taking learning outcome A as an example, You have leadership style and understanding your impact as a professional nurse, you're not expected

to discuss your leadership style in general, but you're expected to tie it specifically to being a nurse and specifically to your impact as a

professional nurse.That focus is really important because 1it is possible to go astray when doing research. So bringing those two elements

together will keep you on track. If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch. The Learning Development team, will be happy to answer any questions. We have drop ins, Monday to Friday,  online and in person. Or if you would like a more in depth  discussion,

or for someone to look at your work, please book a tutorial. Remember, those are available online and in person. Thank you for listening.