Writing Learning Objectives

Learning objectives provide a scope and sequence for your course. They are a roadmap of goals for your students to strive towards.

At the end of a course, students should be able to do something. These should all be verbs where a student can demonstrate mastery over the subject matter being taught, and ideally, be ready for the next step in their learning and professional goals. 

The guides below will help you with writing your Learning Objectives or, if you have not visited the topic in a while, give you a refresher in crafting actionable objectives. 

Bloom's Taxonomy

Designed by Benjamin Bloom, "Bloom's Taxonomy" organizes words and verbs into cognitive domains that scales these words from the most basic comprehension of a concept to a student's ability to internalize and create with the concept. It offers a great way to think about your Learning Objectives from a purely "action" standpoint. 

Bloom's also provides a handy reference for scaffolding your assessments. At the lowest level, Remembering and Understanding deal with comprehension and a student's ability to be able to explain and talk about a given topic. These should happen often, as it helps to reinforce and internalize learning. As students gain more and more mastery over a given topic, they should be challenged and encouraged to do more with their newfound knowledge. 

In the graphics below, note how different types of verbs align with the hierarchy of Bloom's Taxonomy. Though you can add many more, use these as a start to think about your Learning Objectives. 

Writing  a Strong Learning Objective

Your Learning Objectives should be actions that students can perform and be measurable. 

An example of a BAD Learning Objective: 

"Students will understand US Tax Code"

The reason that this is a poor Learning Objective, despite having a verb, is that there is no way to successfully measure this learning objective.  A better way to word this with using a measurable, Blooms-aligned verb is: 

"Students will explain the US Tax Code" 

A student, through a writing assignment, can EXPLAIN a concept for you to assess properly. 

The Components of a Great Learning Objective

While the above examples can be very clear and concise, a truly great Learning Objective will have the following components to it: Performance, Condition, and Criterion. 

Performance refers to the Blooms-aligned verbs.  These can be things specific to your subject matter or program and should be things that students will need to be able to do within that field of study. 

Conditions are metrics for success that are aligned with real-world scenarios or practical conditions. 

Criterion are additional measures for success that often put some type of constraint upon a student. These are best used when they challenge a student to accomplish Performance and Conditions with some type of stipulation. 

Course Level Learning Objectives

These are top-level Learning Objectives that, by the end of the course, students will be able to do. These can be very broad in their writing but should be aligned to the Higher Order of Bloom's Taxonomy, as appropriate. 

Module / Unit Level Learning Objectives

Course instructors will often break their courses into discrete units, often demarcated by "weeks" or "topics", and these should have their own Learning Objectives. Because these are focused on individual topics or units of learning, they can be more specific in nature, but should always be connecting to your Course-Level Learning Objective

Example

Course Level Learning Objective:

"In a written document, students will evaluate nursing best practices in an emergency room setting. 

Unit Level Learning Objectives: 

"Students will describe the actions of nurses in an emergency room setting during a crisis."  

"Students will recommend changes in policy and procedure for nurses in an emergency room setting." 

In the above example, students will have to produce a written document evaluating nursing best practices in an emergency room setting. An opportunity to do so might fall within an individual unit where students are assessing procedure during a crisis setting. The instructor expects students to describe what occurred during this setting and be able to provide recommendations for the nurses being evaluated. This allows for students to meet the course-level objectives through scaffolded opportunities in the individual unit. 

Course Design Map

Use the link below to access a copy of the Course Design Map, a document you can use to help design your online learning course. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SjgXxwYd9shVBnMWvIElJssrvgoUFukVDh_uLyG0bQo/copy?usp=sharing