Six Hats, CLO Themes, Writing CLOs

In order to write “clever” course learning outcomes (CLOs) which enable you to provide evidence for accreditation against all regulatory bodies (Professional, TEQSA) it is essential you ensure your CLOs consider each of the “SixThinking Hats” (represented by the questions in column 1).

Your Course coordinator has harvested all of the relevant standards, Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) and accreditation documents. These were included in the “Curriculum Themes Template” and as well as the supporting documents column below. These were the first stepsrequired to identify the main themes your CLOs should encompass.

To ensure the CLOs take into account all stakeholders views and needs we now need to identify any relevant documents that may help us to answer the questions that remain blank. All key stakeholders need to be involved in the design of the CLOs. This can be achieved through invitation to attend the designing CLO workshop or a consultation round following a draft set may be the best way to capture their voice.

Considerations when constructing CLOs
Six Thinking Hats Questions / Supporting documents
  1. What do you think a graduate should look like?

  1. What do students want to achieve?

  1. What does industry/the profession want from graduates?
/
  • Professional Standards
  • Threshold Learning Outcomes
  • Accreditation Standards (AQF)
  • International standards

  1. What do regulatory bodies want your program to achieve?
/
  • Professional Standards
  • Threshold Learning Outcomes
  • Accreditation Standards (AQF)
  • International standards

  1. Who are you marketing the program at?

  1. What does your institution want a graduate to look like?
/
  • UTAS Graduate Qualities Statement& UTAS Curriculum Principles Statement

Once you have collated and discussed your course’s relevant standards, you should see a pattern of overlapping themes begin to emerge. As a team decide which main theme areas best represent/describe your graduates. Make sure you haven’t missed any major roles/themes that your graduates need to include/look like.

Once you are happy with the themes (5 for a Bachelor Degree is usually plenty) begin to write your CLOs. The CLOs should describe your graduate’s abilities at the point of successfully graduating your course.

As your team writes the CLOs make sure you consider;

  1. Appropriate Verb corresponding to cognitive level of difficulty (Blooms Taxonomy)
  2. Is the CLO realistic/achievable for our graduates
  3. Is the Theme broad enough? Make sure it is not describing a learning activity or unit level assessment task.
  4. Does the CLO capture one main theme? Try to keep it simple –this is important for curriculum design later.
  5. Ask yourself is this measurable/how might we assess this.

Theme / CLO
1. Communicator / Graduates effectively communicate and collaborate to optimise health outcomes for individuals and the broader community.
2. Problem Solver / Graduates are effective and independent problem-solvers who apply an evidence-based and person-centred approach to practice.
3. Professional life-long learners / Graduates are committed to, and proactive in learning new skills, reviewing new evidence and applying new learning throughout the course and clinical practice experiences.
4. Ethical Practitioners / Graduates act ethically, with integrity and social responsibility, and are worthy of individuals and the community's trust.
5. Experts in their Field / As experts in medicines management, graduates source, prepare and supply medicines accurately and efficiently, focusing on person-centred care.
Graduates apply clinical pharmacy expertise about drugs and diseases to optimise the use of medicines across the healthcare system.
Graduates identify opportunities to promote wellness at community and population levels, and undertake socially inclusive health promotion, and preventative health activities.

Pharmacy CLOs example below;

Although not necessary, if you would like an additional Template to help you bring all of your standards together in the one document and visualize the main themes a template and a completed example one (Pharmacy standards) is available in the resources section. They are entitled;

  • Developing Curriculum Themes Template.
  • Developing Curriculum themes example

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Six Hats Template.docx