Introducing the Graduate Aims Database

How might we design learning environments to cultivate specific learner outcomes?

Whether you are designing a completely new learning model or updating your approach as part of ongoing efforts to learn and improve, identifying the outcomes that learners will achieve, deliberately designing toward those outcomes, and assessing your progress along the way are critical steps.

We created the Graduate Aims Database to help!

The Graduate Aims Database is a growing collection of summaries focused on research-based learning outcomes that our partners often take influence from when constructing their own graduate aims. Each summary includes information to help define and measure the outcome, insights into how the outcome develops, potential design implications, and debates or nuances related to the outcome that often have critical equity implications.

Today we are pleased to share four summaries of the following learning outcomes:

Empathy

Ability to understand others’ feelings, take on their perspective, and demonstrate an appropriate emotional response.

Agency

Ability to clarify one’s intentions and goals, identify necessary actions to achieve those goals, and use available resources to accomplish them.

Purpose

Driving intention based on personal or communal interests, values, or desires.

Critical Consciousness

A feeling or mindset of motivation based on personal or communal interests, values, or desires.