Design and implementation of a Learning Outcomes Authoring Tool Supporting the Educator to be Learning Designer Dr. Tania Al. Kerkiri Dept. of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia 156 Egnatia Street, 54006, Thessaloniki, Greece E-mail: kerkiri.tania@gmail.com Dr. Spyros Papadakis School of Science and Technology, Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece E-mail: papadakis@eap.gr Abstract— Educators usually face difficulties while authoring the learning outcomes of a lesson. The well-designed learning outcomes are a key-factor in creating an efficient educational process, and, on the other hand, the dearth of such services is one of the main/common reasons for the failure of, most otherwise, well-established courses. The available LMSs, though, do not sufficiently support the learning outcomes creation. In this paper, the Learning Outcomes Authoring Tool (LOAT), a web based tool that comes to overcome this common addressed issue is presented, along with its architecture. The novelty of LOAT is that it applies emergent web technologies, initially designed for advanced web environments, to support (non-specialist) educators in creating effective learning courses. More over LOAT comes along with a number of pedagogical theories, organized as Taxonomies of Learning Domains. LOAT is designed so that it can be used as a standalone application or as a service into worldwide popular LMSs, such as Moodle, LAMS etc. Keyword: learning management system; intelligent tutoring tool; learning outcomes; learning taxonomies; I. INTRODUCTION A number of powerful web-based educational systems [1] originated from intelligent tutoring systems [2] and adaptive hypermedia [3]. The achievements of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) additionally contribute to their development. Further, the creation of educational resources flourishes, as it is supported from the Educational Technology research. Despite the variety of ICT tools, the plethora of resources being available, and the obvious benefits of their use in teaching and learning, many educators lack the necessary computer skills to take advantage of their potential affordances [4]. Additionally, the LMSs hardly support the (non pedagogical-experienced) educators in creating a course according to pedagogical theories. Still, the educators undertake the total effort of orchestrating the learning activity: they decide the content, they plan the method, and they assess the learning outcomes. International trends in education, though, shift from this traditional educator-centered approach to a learner-centered one, focusing on the abilities the learner should acquire by the end of a course. Consequently, one of the crucial requirements of the modern Learning Management Systems (commonly abbreviated as LMSs) is to support this shift. It is necessary to facilitate the (re)writing of the courses in terms of learning outcomes, clearly describing the goals expected from the learners –an approach that would further determine the techniques the educators could use to achieve these goals. As the existing LMSs lack in capabilities that accommodate these needs [1], [5], [6], a focused effort is presented in this paper, coming to fill this gap: the Learning Outcomes Authoring Tool (LOAT), a web tool, based on taxonomies of learning domains [7], [8]. LOAT is based on emergent web technologies and novel practices applied in web application design. The role of this tool is twofold: from the one side, it comes to aid the educators in writing clear/measurable learning activities and from the other, it intends to augment the accessibility of the learning theory. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Initially, some theoretical concepts, along with the problem that (non- specialist) educators usually face in explaining the design rationale are presented. Continuously, the architecture of the proposed Learning Outcomes Authoring Tool (LOAT), that comes to support this task, is described. Finally, a meta-level part of LOAT, an add-on service in current LMSs, is described, along with its use and its future perspectives. II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Learning outcomes are statements that describe the objectives a learner should be able to perform after completing a learning activity [9]. Consequently, learning objectives or outcomes are a tool for both educators and learners: the educators can use learning objectives to precisely express what they expect from their learners [10] and, the learners can use them to easily prove and self-assess their achievements. As a result, a clear set of measurable performance definitions reduces the risk of a biased evaluation of the learner. To further highlight the results of the proper selected learning outcomes, let‟s mention that in case where narrow and limited learning outcomes are used, an education where creativity and imaginative leaps are highly valued is not supported [12]. A well-constructed learning objective must contain three parts: the conditions under which the behavior is performed, a verb that defines the behavior itself and the scale (criteria) to which a student should perform the behavior. If any one of these three components is missing the learning outcome is