Sharing learning outcomes in chemistry teaching at HE level: Beneficial or detrimental?

The sharing of explicit learning objectives and/or learning outcomes is considered to be good practice in schools, with OFSTED observation criteria indicating that this is a pre-requisite to a good or outstanding lesson1. Such practice does not appear to be widespread in chemistry teaching at HE level. Whilst a statement of aims/objectives/outcomes can normally be found in the documentation accompanying any given unit of teaching, these are typically in a less student-friendly format than those used in school, or are too vague to be useful. At the same time, many lecturers do communicate aims at the start of a lecture, but there may be scope for doing this in a more effective way. The extent to which students are exposed to „learning outcomes‟ varies greatly from institution to institution, discipline to discipline and from teacher to teacher, and as such it is difficult to discern the best approach. This article presents some background on developments at pre-university level that have influenced practice in this area, and outlines the findings of a research project carried out in the School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. The project probed the views of staff and students regarding the usefulness of learning outcomes. Several different approaches to sharing learning outcomes with first year students were trialled and evaluated during the course of the 2010-11 academic year. This work is part of an on-going initiative which aims to identify effective methods to support students in becoming independent learners when making the transition to university, and to improve retention rates.