Mastering Learning Outcomes: A Guide to Enhancing Corporate Training

Key takeaways

Learning outcomes identify the skills, values, and knowledge your employees should acquire after completing a training program.

• Implement learning outcomes before, during, and after training sessions to guide your activities and evaluate the effectiveness of your training. 

• Create effective learning outcomes by choosing those that are specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, and time-framed.

• You can align your learning outcomes with your company’s goals to improve organizational performance.

Learn more about how to develop learning outcomes and how to use them to measure the impact and return on investment (ROI) of your training. Then, discover how to incorporate Coursera for Business or Coursera for Campus into your training plan for employees, staff, or faculty. Our expert-powered learning platform gives your employees an opportunity to learn and earn industry-recognized credentials from more than 350 leading companies and universities.

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What are learning outcomes?

Learning outcomes are the skills, values, and knowledge learners should have after completing a class or training program. According to the creators of the Understanding by Design framework, thinking about the desired results when planning lessons leads to more purposeful lessons and greater understanding and allows facilitators to make adjustments to meet the needs of the learners [1].

Understanding the power of learning outcomes

To understand the power of learning outcomes, consider the last time you asked someone for directions or consulted a navigation app. You have to share the destination. Otherwise, in the words of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, "...it doesn't matter which way you go" [2]. 

You can consider learning outcomes as the destination for your training, and use learning outcomes before, during, and after training sessions. 

• Before: As you plan sessions, referring to learning outcomes helps you choose the information you share with participants and the activities they will engage in.

• During: You can share the learning outcomes with participants so they know what you expect them to learn. Referring back to the learning outcomes also helps you stay focused on the goals as you present.

• After: Learning outcomes can help you assess the effectiveness of the training. You can ask participants to share how they've met them or use them to create a formal assessment of the material. 

Read more: Transforming Corporate Training With Personalized Learning

How to craft effective learning outcomes

Effective learning outcomes involve a strategic approach that starts with identifying the specific skills, knowledge, and behaviors employees need to develop to meet business goals. The outcomes should focus on what the learner will know or be able to do after completing the training. This differs slightly from a training goal or objective, as it encompasses how the training will impact the organization.

Learning outcomes often take this form:

"As a result of participating in [insert name of program], you will be able to [insert an action verb] [insert learning statement].

If you're training new employees to use the company's email system, your learning outcome might look like this:

"As a result of participating in the second onboarding training session, you can access your company email and set up your signature."

Bloom's Taxonomy selects action verbs in a learning outcome statement, including define, describe, use, demonstrate, compare, select, design, and create. The learning statement should reflect one of three types of knowledge:

• Content: Facts and information (names and uses of products) 

• Process: The ability to work through a process or procedure (how to send a meeting invite to team members)

• Conditions: Selecting the type of knowledge needed for a specific situation (responding to a complaint from a customer)

SMART learning outcomes

The SMART acronym is a helpful tool for creating effective learning outcome statements. SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, and time-framed. See how the learning statement above embodies these ideas:

• Specific: Employees know they should be able to complete two tasks: open the email system and set up a signature.

• Measurable: Participants who complete the training will have an email signature set up, and the signature provides proof that they were able to access the email system.

• Agreed upon: In most organizations, email is an essential communication tool that everyone should be able to use.

• Realistic: Employees can demonstrate their mastery of these two tasks within a single session. Using this as a learning outcome for a full-day session would be unrealistic.

• Time-framed: This learning outcome is for one onboarding training session, and employees know it's the second session.

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Tips for creating effective learning outcome statements

Creating learning outcome statements is a process that ideally starts before you begin planning for training sessions. Consider the following tips as you work:

• Align learning outcomes with organizational goals and performance metrics. 

• Stay focused on what participants can do rather than what the facilitator will share.

• Use Bloom's Taxonomy to create learning outcomes at different cognitive levels.

• Use action verbs. Explaining three benefits of software as a service is easier to measure than improving knowledge of it.

• Brainstorm a list of all possible learning outcomes. Rank each idea, and narrow your list to the knowledge and tasks that are most important for the group of people you will train. 

Using learning outcomes to measure impact and training ROI

You can use learning outcomes to measure the impact and ROI of your corporate training program, ensuring the training you offer employees is relevant to their work and that the organization reaches its goals. Learning outcomes help make the learning process tangible, so you know what's working and what needs improvement. Review the following metrics and how you can tie them to learning outcomes:

• Engagement: How many employees attend training? Consider variables like the facilitator, modality, and topic to identify what engages employees.

• Retention: How long do employees stay with the company after completing training? You can also look at the types of training employees complete and cross-reference them with tenure.

• Satisfaction: Ask employees to rate their experience, ask for feedback to improve the training, and suggest future topics.

• Skill acquisition: You can give participants a before-and-after survey to assess their knowledge or competence using a skill.

• Technology adoption: Track employees who need training for new technology.

• Time to competency: Ask employees how many days or weeks it took them to apply the skills they learned. Alternatively, you may look for a measurable increase in employees applying their knowledge.

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