“If you don’t know where you’re going you might end up somewhere else”

This phase involves defining what is to be learned in terms of what someone who has successfully completed the program should be able to do. This  provides clues for knowledge, skills and attitudes needed. In order to create a well-scaffolded program, these learning outcomes also need to be translated in underlying levels. In other words: what are the underlying learning outcomes for each stage of the program? Defining the learning outcomes involves conducting functional analyses and defining the guiding principles for determining levels.

This phase of the educational design process typically results in a list of validated overarching learning outcome statements, and a scaffolding of the statements at the various levels of progress (including a rationale for the scaffolding principle).