Quality Assurance and Learning Outcomes. ENQA Workshop Report 17

Learning outcomes are described as written statements of what a learner is expected to know, understand and/or be able to do at the end of a period of learning. At the beginning of the 90s, a EU pilot project on ECTS showed that study programmes were much easier to compare if they were described in terms of outcomes, instead of inputs. The importance of learning outcomes will increase for several reasons. Firstly, learning outcomes make qualifications more transparent for students. Then, the range of graduates is becoming wider and thanks to learning outcomes, employers may have a better understanding of the acquired knowledge, skills and competences in order to recruit the most suitable candidate. Learning outcomes benefit for quality assurance as they increase transparency and comparability between qualification standards. Learning outcomes are also valuable in terms of course design. This report presents four articles based on the ENQA workshop on the theme "Quality Assurance and Learning Outcomes" that was held in September 2010 in Vienna, Austria. The workshop addressed the question of what stakeholders expect from quality assurance agencies in connection with learning outcome orientation. The opportunities and challenges of the learning outcome orientation in the higher education sector were discussed from different perspectives. The workshop tried to define the role that learning outcomes should play in external quality assurance and how they can or should be considered within the scope of external quality assurance. Articles included in this paper are: (1) On quality assurance and learning outcomes: Evaluating students' work within institutions or institutional work with students? (Lena Adamson); (2) Learning outcomes in external quality assurance: The case of Spain (Maria Becerro, Laureano Gonzalez-Vega & Juan Jose Sobrino); (3) Determining whether intended learning outcomes meet subject-specific and academic and/or professional requirements (Peter Cullen); and (4) Which requirements should the formulation of learning outcomes meet? (Norma Ryan). ENQA Workshop: "Quality Assurance and Learning Outcomes" is appended. (Contain 3 figures, 2 tables, and 14 footnotes.)