Develop Shared Learning Outcomes
Ensures that redesigned roles connect directly to career readiness and institutional learning goals. It emphasizes measurable outcomes, reflection prompts, and alignment with NACE competencies.
Why This Matters
A redesigned student employment system only creates lasting impact when learning is intentional, visible, and measurable. That’s where shared learning outcomes come in.
Without them, even the best-designed roles risk becoming inconsistent or disconnected from institutional goals. With them, every job becomes part of a unified ecosystem that supports skill development, reflection, and career readiness for all students.
Shared outcomes make the learning in student employment explicit and equitable. They ensure that whether a student works in a lab, library, or dining hall, they have access to meaningful development opportunities that prepare them for what comes next.
Your Goal
To define and align a small set of learning outcomes that:
- Reflect your institution’s mission and values
- Connect to NACE career readiness competencies (e.g., communication, teamwork, professionalism)
- Guide supervisors in mentoring and feedback
- Provide students with language to describe their growth and skills
Getting Started
Step 1: Start with the Why
Begin by asking, Why should student employment be a learning experience?
Possible answers might include:
- To strengthen student success and retention.
- To help students build transferable skills for future careers.
- To ensure every student — especially those who work — has access to developmental opportunities.
Clarifying your “why” will help your team select learning outcomes that are meaningful, not just measurable.
Step 2: Review Existing Frameworks
Look to national frameworks for inspiration. The NACE Career Readiness Competencies provide a strong foundation:
- Career & Self-Development
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- Equity & Inclusion
- Leadership
- Professionalism
- Teamwork
- Technology
You don’t need to adopt all of them. Choose the competencies that best align with your institution’s mission and the real-world skills your students need to thrive.
Step 3: Co-Create Outcomes with Stakeholders
Don’t write learning outcomes in isolation. Invite working learners, supervisors, and faculty to co-create them. Ask:
- What skills do students actually develop in their jobs?
- Which skills are missing or underdeveloped?
- How could supervisors intentionally support these competencies?
Example: If students often say their jobs helped them “learn to manage time,” you might translate that into a formal outcome:
“Students will demonstrate effective time management and prioritize tasks in a professional setting.”
Step 4: Make Learning Visible
Once outcomes are defined, integrate them into the fabric of student employment:
- Include learning outcomes in job descriptions and training materials.
- Encourage supervisors to reference them in performance check-ins.
- Build reflection prompts that help students articulate how they’ve demonstrated each competency.
Reflection prompt examples:
- “Describe a time when you solved a problem at work — what skills did you use?”
- “How has your supervisor supported your professional growth?”
- “Which skills from this job will help you in your career after graduation?”
When students can name what they’ve learned, they carry that confidence into future job searches and interviews.
Step 5: Connect to Institutional Learning Goals
Many institutions already have campus-wide learning outcomes like critical thinking, communication, or civic engagement. Aligning student employment outcomes with these existing frameworks strengthens institutional coherence.
Work with your Office of Institutional Effectiveness, Career Services, or Assessment teams to ensure consistency. This alignment helps student employment gain recognition as a high-impact practice rather than a peripheral program.
Step 6: Build Tools for Reflection and Assessment
Finally, develop simple, scalable tools to help supervisors and students reflect and assess progress:
- Learning Reflection Cards (students complete at midterm and end of term).
- Supervisor Check-in Templates (to prompt coaching conversations).
- Digital Badges or Microcredentials (for demonstrating specific competencies).
These tools don’t need to be complex — just intentional. The goal is to make learning visible and valued.
Reflection Prompt
How might learning outcomes make the invisible learning in student employment visible and valuable for every student?
Takeaway
Developing shared learning outcomes is what turns student employment from a set of disconnected jobs into a cohesive, equitable learning ecosystem. It provides a common language for growth, helps students recognize their own development, and ensures that every supervisor and department contributes to your institution’s mission of preparing students for meaningful, purposeful work.