A critique of generic learning outcomes

Abstract

Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs) are intended to enable cultural heritage organisations to be aware of the effectiveness of the environment for learning that they provide and to provide quantitative evidence of the impact of museums libraries and archives on learning, nationally. This paper presents a logical critique of their strengths and limitations and proposes an alternative approach to assessing learning impact in lifelong learning contexts based on the five key learning activity types defined by Laurillard. GLOs are subjective, post hoc measures of factors only indirectly related to learning. Using Laurillard’s framework, the variety and the heterogeneity of the informal lifelong learner group can be comfortably accommodated by a small number of learning experience types that can provide the foundation for specific "predictive" learning outcomes. So the risk of developing learning activities that do not work well can be avoided.