SLOs should be:
- Specific: focused on specific knowledge, abilities, or dispositions. Each statement should be sufficiently detailed to convey exactly what the ideal student “looks like” at the end of a program and what is indicative of success.
- Measurable: convey the knowledge, abilities, or dispositions such that they are able to be evidenced. Each statement should convey exactly what a student could do to demonstrate their attainment of the intended SLO and what is considered success.
- Reasonable: Within the specific context of an SLO, the level of knowledge, ability, or disposition expected or aspired to from students should be realistic. It is not helpful to set unrealistic expectations for students or programs. It is also problematic, however, to set expectations too low. Every SLO should aim to set a balanced goal between these two extremes.
A helpful formula for writing SLOs is the A [Audience], B [Behavior], C [Condition], D [Degree] format. For example:
“As a result of [Condition], [Audience] will be able to [behavior] [degree].”
- Audience: Who is the target audience (i.e., students)
- Behavior: What is the work to be accomplished by the learner? (Should include an appropriate action verb)
- Condition: What are the conditions/constraints in which the learners will be expected to perform these tasks?
- Degree: How will the behavior need to be performed? To what specificity or measure?
Example:
"Upon graduating from the program, students will be able to integrate self-awareness, counseling roles and reflective practices into a professional counseling identity."
- Audience: students
- Behavior: integrate self-awareness, counseling roles and reflective practices
- Condition: Upon graduating from the program
- Degree: professional-level counseling identity
A framework such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, a hierarchical model used for classification of learning objectives (and their associated educational experiences and assessments) into levels of complexity and specificity, is particularly useful for identifying behaviors and writing quality SLOs.