Friday SLO Talk 3/21/2025
By Jarek Janio, Ph.D.
Panelists:
Dr. Leslie Jennings, Nursing Faculty
Missina Minter, Health Sciences Librarian
Megan Zara, OER Librarian
Dr. Stacy Greathouse, Instructional Designer and Learning Architect
What happens when a team of educators, librarians, and instructional designers challenge the norms of nursing education and set out to build a course around authentic student learning? The result is a powerful case study in how Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) can anchor every element of instruction—content, delivery, and assessment—when competency is the goal.
In this Friday SLO Talk, a panel from the University of Texas at Arlington shared how they transformed a perioperative nursing course into a model of performance-based, high-stakes clinical learning. Here’s what we can all learn from it.
1. What Is Student Learning? Competency in Context
In nursing education, student learning is not an abstract notion. It must be demonstrated in high-stakes, real-world settings, where the consequences are measured in patient well-being.
“Ultimately, what we expect them to walk away with is this list of things they can do—and that’s what it means to pass the course.”
—Dr. Leslie Jennings
The panel defined learning as observable, measurable, and practice-based. It’s not enough to know what perioperative care entails; students must be able to perform critical tasks like analyzing surgical risks or responding to complications under pressure. Learning, in this context, is not about internal understanding—it’s about external demonstration of competency.
2. Grounding the Course in SLOs: Design with Purpose
At the heart of this course were three overarching SLOs that anchored the entire design. Every lesson outcome, assignment, and learning material had to directly support these outcomes. The team developed an extensive course map to align each lesson’s objectives and assessments with Bloom’s Taxonomy levels, ensuring they never asked students to do more or less than what was appropriate for each level.
“Everything had to fall into alignment with those SLOs: every reading, every conversation, every assessment.”
—Dr. Jennings
This wasn’t an afterthought or a formality. The SLOs became a compass. If something didn’t align—including a beloved but off-topic historical unit—it had to go.
3. Assessment: Making Learning Visible
What sets this course apart is the rigorous focus on authentic, performance-based assessment. Students are not evaluated through multiple-choice tests or passive reflection. Instead, they:
- Create concept maps based on real surgical procedures they observe.
- Build skills incrementally through flipped classroom content and simulation labs.
- Receive ungraded, formative feedback through interactive H5P tools that mirror the final assessments.
“Students didn’t just study the material. They used it—in the OR, in simulation labs, in mapping real-time decisions made during surgery.”
—Stacy Greathouse
The team calls this “scaffolded learning,” where each activity builds toward a final demonstration of competency that is unmistakably observable.
4. The Holy H.A.I.L. Language: Alignment at Every Level
Instructional designer Stacy Greathouse introduced the concept of “Holy H.A.I.L. Language” to describe full alignment across all course components:
- H: Highlight key terms from SLOs in lesson outcomes
- A: Align assignment instructions with those same verbs
- I: Integrate instructional content directly tied to outcomes
- L: List exact criteria in rubrics using identical phrasing
“If ‘analyze’ is the SLO verb, you’d better see it in the lesson, in the quiz, and in the rubric. That’s Holy H.A.I.L.”
—Greathouse
This principle ensures that students always know what they’re working toward—and faculty can prove that instruction, content, and assessment are tightly integrated.
5. Tools of the Trade: Spreadsheets, Simulators, and Structure
The course was built on transparency and collaboration. Tools used included:
- A course map linking each lesson to its aligned outcome and assessment.
- A resource tracker spreadsheet listing every material, its licensing, accessibility score, and relevance to outcomes.
- The Rice University Course Workload Estimator, used to calculate student time-on-task and prevent what Greathouse calls “time terrorism.”
- H5P formative assessments designed to mirror final tasks, letting students fail and recover in low-stakes environments.
“Nothing was invisible. Even technology choices were intentional—meant to support, not burden, the learner.”
—Greathouse
6. The Crew Mentality: Design as Collaboration
This course wasn’t built in isolation. Instead, it was constructed by what the panel calls a “Motley Crew”—a group of content specialists, librarians, instructional technologists, accessibility experts, and learning architects working together.
Each role had distinct responsibilities:
- The content specialist ensured clinical accuracy.
- The OER librarian (Megan Zara) curated cost-effective, bias-free resources.
- The health sciences librarian (Missina Minter) vetted everything against medical databases and professional standards.
- The instructional designer maintained alignment and accessibility across platforms.
“Learning is a crew activity—not a solo voyage. And no one gets to climb the crow’s nest if they’re a fish.”
—Greathouse
This mindset allowed for greater empathy, flexibility, and ultimately a more human-centered course.
7. Results: A Course That Runs Without You
Because of its thoughtful structure, this course is now scalable and repeatable. Faculty don’t need to rebuild it every semester. Students don’t need to guess what’s expected. And the institution doesn’t need to wonder whether learning is happening.
It is.
The course runs on aligned, observable learning outcomes that are assessed through real, human practice. The structure supports faculty and students alike—and the design can easily be adapted for online or hybrid delivery.
Final Thought: Learning as Competency, Not Coverage
In the end, this nursing course reminds us what SLOs are for. They are not bureaucratic requirements. They are contracts with learners—explicit statements of what students should be able to do as a result of instruction.
When SLOs are taken seriously, as they were here, everything changes: how we design, how we assess, how we teach, and most importantly, how students learn.
“When you start with performance, with real-world application, you design differently—and students rise to meet it.”
—Dr. Jennings