Outcomes Logical Overview
Description
This page is designed to give a logical overview of the various components and how they fit together. It also gives a lot of examples of very specific use cases and how they should work.
Outcomes and Outcome Sets
The fundamental building block of the Outcomes System is the Outcome itself. An *outcome* is often referred to in various geographies differently, by names like Goal, Competency, Skill, or Standard. Typically, it is very granular, and, for most well designed outcome-based learning approaches, it is specifically measurable. Outcomes have text that describes the outcome, and also they have some type of logical identifier. So, for example, and Outcome might be "Student Can use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate lengths of line segments of a right triangle." The logical identifier for this might be 8.3.1. So, from a logical perspective. The Outcome is made up of its text and its logical identifier.
An Outcome Set is a grouping of outcomes, and it can have multiple levels of logical groupings. So, for example, one logical grouping might be Physics Department Learning Goals, another grouping might be Nursing Practitioner Skills, or a third might be 9th Grade Math Standards. From there, you could have sub categories (outcome sets). An example might be that the 9th Grade Math Standards. They could have a sub category of "Geometry and Shapes" and another subcategory of "Linear Equations", each with their own standards. Here is a logical diagram of an outcome set, and an example:
Relationship to a Course
In order to make the outcomes useful, they need to be used in a course, by mapping activities, resources, etc. to an outcome. However, there could be thousands of individual outcomes in a Moodle, so we want to simplify interfaces and relationships in the system. This is achieved by allowing an administrator or (optionally) an instructor to map their course against an Outcome Set. Once they have made this association, this outcome set will be the default outcome set for mapping and reporting, greatly simplifying the workflow for the user. A course can be mapped against 0, 1, or many Outcome Sets.
