PDF File).Focusing on Learning with Outcomes
The most productive place to start when you are thinking of how to design a collaborative research project for your students is with what you want them to learn. You can state your students’ learning goals clearly—for both them and for yourself—through learning outcomes.
How Do Learning Outcomes Work?
Learning outcomes focus on creating a climate in which the learner is actively engaged in the process of constructing knowledge.
Traditional research projects often rely on formula, and students sense that this writing is simply an exercise—their professors are not reading their research papers for innovative ideas and applications, but rather to judge the students’ responses against an ideal paper to which only the instructor has access (in her or his mind). For many students, then, the task becomes writing “what my instructor wants to read.”
To shift the focus to student learning, use learning outcomes to show students what they will be able to do when they have successfully participated in a collaborative research project.
By providing authentic tasks that are measurable and applicable to other situations outside of the classroom context, you are providing your students with an opportunity for:
- increased learning
- stronger articulation of ideas
- longer retention of knowledge
- development of more sophisticated analytical and critical skills
- and increased performance on future learning projects.
