Rather than solely describing the course content, ILOs emphasise what a student can do. These could include core knowledge, and skills and graduate attributes. They are usually phrased as bullet-points, following the stem sentence: By the end of this course, the students will be able to...  

The ‘knowledge’ of the course should thus be articulated through specific activities: for instance, will students be able to identify an argument, evaluate explanations, select appropriate evidence, apply a method? Elaborations on Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (see diagram below) may help you to find the words to describe the learning on your course.  

• Transferrable/graduate skills and attributes
• The scope of the course: concepts, locations/eras, the materials or tools with which the student is working. 

All students who successfully complete the course should be able to complete the outcomes; no learning outcomes can be a ‘stretch goal’, for high achievers.  

ILOs are phrased as ‘intended’ because any course of study has additional positive outcomes for individuals which cannot be anticipated. 

ILOs should be communicated to students:  

• To help course participants understand what is expected of them 
• If the course is an option course, to inform the selection process. 

You could share them through Moodle, and refer to them during contact hours when relevant. For this reason, ILOs should be comprehensible to students, although they will probably use some specialist terminology which the student may not fully understand at the course outset. 

M-Level course in Behavioural Science 

By the end of the course the students will be able to:  

• Identify and discuss the methodological tools across experimental psychology and economics that are essential for designing advanced behavioural science research.   
• Apply these tools in their own research, which should propel them to produce top-quality research for their dissertations.  
• Analyse experimental data that probed causal mechanisms behind behavioural change.  
• Evaluate the quality of advanced research publications in behavioural science.  
• Create their own experiments that involve behavioural priming, implicit cognition, preferences, attitudes, strategic games, etc. and/or probe mechanisms behind causal effects in behavioural research. 

M-Level course in International Relations 

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

• comprehend and evaluate the war and society tradition 
• apply this tradition to the analysis of world politics and assess its significance 
• evaluate the role of war in historical, social and political change 
• diagnose the relationship between war and knowledge about war (reflexivity) 
• read, interpret, and critique monograph length texts 

Eden Centre departmental advisers can work with you on identifying and drafting your ILOs.