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LOUIS

Learning Outcomes in Universities for Impact on Society

LOUIS stands for Learning Outcomes in University for Impact on Society. It is a tool to strengthen the general academic and personal learning outcomes in subject-oriented courses and programmes. It bridges the gap between broad, generic competence descriptions in qualification frameworks and desired students’ performance and growth in the classroom. 

On the LOUIS Resources page, more and more detailed information can be found on local contacts. On the LOUIS Resources page, more and more detailed information can be found on local contacts. On the LOUIS Resources page, more and more detailed information can be found on local contacts.

LOUIS resources
LOUIS in English

Why LOUIS?

LOUIS is one of the three components of the Aurora Competence Framework, together with SEISMIC and BEVI. The Aurora Competence Framework is meant to help achieve the Aurora Education Vision: to equip graduates with not only the subject expertise, but also the skills and mind-sets to contribute to society.  

Teachers can use LOUIS to explain better to their students what improvement they want to see in their students in specific competence dimensions beyond the subject expertise of their course. They can use the performance descriptors to explain what competence they assume their students have at the start and what they will need to show in order to pass or receive a mark of distinction. 

Students can – even independently of their teachers – identify specific competence dimensions in which they feel the need to grow and use the performance descriptors to identify where they are and where they want to be. 

How does LOUIS work?

LOUIS offers intuitively understandable language to explain to students what progress they are expected to make in transversal competences. It helps teachers to support their students’ progress across a broad variety of subject-specific courses. 

It does that because it deconstructs broad competences (like critical thinking, teamwork or ethical reasoning) into dimensions or sub-competences that teachers can relate to their subject and because it offers language to describe progress in those from dimensions. 

prezi presentation

In this prezi presentation, you can explore the 16 general competences in LOUIS, each with 5 or 6 dimensions and each of those with 4 progressive performance descriptors. You can zoom in at a specific competence, its dimensions and their progressive performance descriptors, and zoom back to the overview of the 16 competences. 

 A growing community of academic teachers uses LOUIS and finds that it works. See more endorsements on our LOUIS resources page

LOUIS Resources

LOUIS has developed tools for interested academic teachers. All of these, you will find on the LOUIS Resources page: 

  • An overview of local LOUIS experts in Aurora universities 
  • LOUIS in its various language versions and a manual how to use it 
  • An overview and samples of courses that have been adapted using LOUIS 
  • Information on LOUIS workshops and training sessions 
  • Reference literature on LOUIS, the sources from which it stems and other topics relevance to transversal skills and learning outcomes 

On this LOUIS landing page, we already give you direct access to the tool in  English, German, and  Italian), as well as an overview of samples of LOUIS-adapted courses and a sample end-of-course questionnaire. On the AURORA LOUIS Resources page, you will also find a 2-hour webinar on LOUIS. Aurora colleagues who already use LOUIS in practice are willing to help on a peer-to-peer basis. 

For a sample syllabus that implemented LOUIS, please see Course Syllabus: International and European Environmental Law.  

LOUIS Resources

LOUIS Community of Practitioners

Since the development of LOUIS in 2021, a growing number of teachers and teacher development professionals has formed a Community of Practice. This LOUIS Community of Practice bring together experts, expertise and supporting tools on a specific topic of interest to Aurora and its objectives.  

The LOUIS Community of Practice welcomes requests (see contact form) for information and advice from academic teachers and educational developers within and beyond the Aurora community. Depending on the time involved, a non-commercial fee for costs and services may be charged. 

Endorsements

Sabina Di Prima

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Many frameworks offer valuable guidance for curriculum development, but the LOUIS Competence Framework stood out to me because of its “Global Learning” competence and its clear subdimensions. They provided exactly the structure I needed to integrate transversal skills that are essential for my summer school course on food systems transformation, helping students connect interdisciplinary knowledge with global challenges, engage with diverse perspectives, and develop the competences needed for active global citizenship.

Lina Penagos

Université Paris-Est Créteil

The LOUIS course in Amsterdam provided valuable support for our curriculum development work. Within one week of completing the course, I was able, together with our join team of teachers, to integrate subject-specific and transversal learning outcomes into our future joint Aurora course on Life Course Trajectories and well-being. The LOUIS framework helped us to define relevant dimensions and sub-competences, providing a structure approach to embedding transversal competences within the course design.

Olena Mykolenko

V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

In quite a few of our Euridice courses, the LOUIS competences and dimensions help to explain to students what is expected of them.

Florian Freitag

University of Duisburg Essen

I changed from teaching many subjects and developing general competences to developing general competences using my topic as a pathway.

Veronika Tomoszokva

Palacký University Olomouc

The moment we saw LOUIS descriptors, we knew that this would help our university to do what we had felt it should do for so many years already.

Maxim Tomoszek

Palacký University Olomouc

The more I explain the VALUE/LOUIS descriptors to colleagues, the more I understand and like them myself.