This is one of the topics that we are amazed by. For decades, it has been advocated that every course should have clear learning outcomes and be designed with these in mind. This is known to be the best practice. It is not open for debate!
The learning outcomes should follow from the degree program outcomes. The students should know what the learning outcomes are and how they will be assessed. Unfortunately, we still find this topic being discussed with too many instructors failing to understand the importance of having learning outcomes explicitly considered, designed in, and communicated.
In theory, the learning outcomes are aligned to Bloom’s taxonomy covering one or more of the topics; knowledge, comprehending, applying, analysing, synthesizing, and evaluating. The first Bloom topic is fairly straightforward and many of the courses in the first and second year of university are foundational and focused on this one level. What knowledge do you need to 'comprehend' the material at the desired level of mastery. The remaining levels are the cognitive skills and all use the knowledge dimension with varying degrees of success; what knowledge is needed to apply, needed to analyse, and so forth. There are skills at each level to develop and it is not just the knowledge.
The learning outcomes should be clear as to the level of mastery in each case, because almost any task we ask a student to do will have some degree of knowledge, comprehension, applying their knowledge, thinking about what they are doing, combining ideas, and thinking about how good their answer is. Even the naïve level of skill and expertise has these elements as the individual guesses, flails, and provides an answer. While it is doubtful that a student will actually achieve any real level of expertise during their undergraduate degree, they should progress from naïve, to novice, to junior in one or more areas of speciality, and be at different levels of cognitive skill expertise by the time they graduate.
Often an instructor might want to enhance a course by adding extra material and content. We encourage this in fact. Every course should have room for the instructor to provide their own insights and ideas. However, the actual course assessments and majority of course content should be driven by the calendar descriptions and the program requirements.