Generic Learning Outcomes - friend or foe?

This is a really quick post in my lunch break so apologies for the brevity.  I intend to blog more fulsomely about the joint MCG/DLNET Engaging Digital Audiences in Museums conference yesterday over the days / weeks to come but I wanted to follow up on one point.

I just want to continue discussion here if possible about one particular point: A mention of learning outcomes in the morning suggested to me that there was perhaps a little negativity around the concept. I tried to open up this discussion in an unconference session called 'Learning outcomes: Friend or foe' but most of us in that session were already regular users of the Generic Learning Outcomes and therefore we didn't have the lively debate that we expected to have so I wanted to continue the discussion here:

1. What does the term 'learning outcome' mean to you?
2. What are your experiences of working with learning outcomes?
3. Would you consider them to be a friend or a foe and why?

I'm moving into a new role at Museum of London next week (more on this later) and part of that job will be about bringing lots of digital sub-teams around the Museum of London together to work more collaboratively.  A better understanding of the kinds of differences of opinion / misconceptions / likes / dislikes / different vocabularies or whatever you want to call them about issues like this would be really useful for me to help plan how I go about doing this.

Please let me know your thoughts by commenting on this post!