Design and Implementation of a Learning Outcomes Authoring Tool: Supporting the Educator to be Learning Designer

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.