Creating concise objectives is key to developing purposeful and systematic instruction. One of the most prevalent conclusions that educators have drawn from the large body of instructional research is that instruction needs to be tailored to support concrete instructional objectives and to meet specific learning outcomes (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1974; Bloom, Krathwohl, & Masia, 1956).
The HLC Criteria for Accreditation requires that all institutions must develop a set of learning goals for each program that is consistent with the mission of the school or program. To meet the HLC requirement, it is important to link your course goals and objectives to the course activities for your course. In an online environment, clear and measurable course goals and objectives are especially important for creating a purposeful learning environment.
this article from the Journal of College Science Teaching, "Increasing Student Interactions with Learning Objectives" provides more information about why learning objectives are integral to student engagement.
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives is a framework for classifying different ways of thinking about and ordering objectives. According to Bloom (1956), learning occurs in three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Within the cognitive domain, Bloom categorizes and orders thinking skills and objectives from lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills in six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The framework has since been adapted for classroom use as a means to support the purposeful development of instructional content and specific measurable learning objectives.
Two major revisions on Bloom’s taxonomy took place in the recent decade. Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) first revised Bloom's taxonomy to meet the needs of 21st-century audiences. The revised taxonomy included the use of verbs in categories of thinking skills and rearrangement of the sequence within the taxonomy. Clark (2007) later adapted this revision in a circular graphic called Bloom’s Taxonomy Adapted Model. Refer to this adapted model to help write your learning objectives and select appropriate assessment items for your own course(s).
In 2007, Church extended Bloom's taxonomy even further to fit the needs of the new social media technology. In the digital taxonomy, Church integrated the use of blogs, wikis, and other social media tools together with traditional means to demonstrate the six categories of thinking skills.
Visit the NICC Assessment Site for more on Bloom's and to download the official NICC Bloom's verb list.
A number of instructional strategies and best practices that are relevant to developing learning objectives have been included in the following section.
Create broad course goals in accordance with the mission of the college or program goals.
Relate course goals into one or more measurable learning objectives for each unit/module/week of your course.
Use action verbs, such as list, evaluate, etc. to write measurable and observable learning objectives.
Align your learning objectives with your assessment strategies.
Once you have written learning objectives for your unit of instruction, it's time to decide how you will have students demonstrate that they've met those objectives. Browse the topics below to learn more about different types of assessment.
For a great conversation on assessment, listen to The Faculty Focus Podcast, Episode 1: Classroom Assessment Techniques: Does This Make Sense to Everyone? (10:50)
Multiple choice and short answer tests (or quizzes) are useful for assessing students' abilities to recognize and recall content. They are also fairly easy to grade, and when faced with a large class size, you can make the grading automatic depending on the question type. Read the following information to guide you in creating quality multiple-choice questions:
Assessments that require a subjective analysis are often more difficult and time-consuming to grade; however, this type of assessment is appropriate for gauging how well students are able to apply the concepts learned in class. Read the following information to help you create effective essay and other academic prompts:
Other types of formal assessment can include:
Presentations
Projects
Speeches
Digital Media Creation
Informal assessments are integral to any quality course. In addition to providing you with valuable feedback on whether students are on track to meeting learning objectives, informal assessments also help students practice material in a low-stakes environment. And to top it off, these assessments provide you with more ways to engage with your students and for them to interact with each other.
Some sample strategies include:
Incorporate one-minute papers submitted through the assignment tool.
Have students reflect on journal prompts by using the Discussions tool (it is possible to set up this tool so that each student has a discussion thread that is only visible to you and them).
Conduct ungraded evaluations using the Survey tool.
Create practice assessments or self-tests using the Quiz tool.
Use an external tool and embed or link to the assessment from Brightspace (you can learn more about some of these tools in the next tab, as well as in the Innovation Station module of this course).
Whether your course is face-to-face, blended, or entirely online, Brightspace gives you have the opportunity to develop and create a multitude of assessments using new and innovative tools. Students will feel a strong sense of relevance to your course materials when you align your content objectives with your assessments. This section reviews two types of assessments, formal and informal, that can help shape how you assess your students online.
Formal assessments provide a systematic way to measure students’ progress. These types of assessments also contribute to the final grade, which indicates a student’s mastery of the subject, e.g. midterm, and finals.
Informal Assessments generally provide the faculty member with the ability to gauge their students’ comprehension of course material. It does not involve assigning grades. Furthermore, these can be used to allow students to practice the material prior to a formal assessment, e.g., self-tests.
Below are some strategies that you can use to facilitate effective feedback:
Quiz question feedback in Brightspace – provides an opportunity for faculty to indicate why answers are correct/incorrect.
Discussion tool in Brightspace- this tool provides the ability to offer feedback by responding to your students.
After assessment feedback – provides an overview of the commonly missed questions. You can choose to deliver it in a variety of mediums [ e.g., the Announcement tool, course email, or as a personal webcast (video)].
Assignment feedback - Brightspace has places for you to share feedback when evaluating student assignments. You can write text, add video or audio feedback, and even annotate within written assignments.
Once you've composed assessments that align with your unit learning objectives, the next step is to create activities for students to complete. These activities can serve a number of purposes:
Content delivery: Students might learn new concepts through an interactive presentation.
Practice: Students might work through homework problems or play a game to reinforce learning.
Engagement: Students might do a group activity or engage with you through a discussion.
Informal Assessment: Even though learning activities are different from assessments, they often add another way for you to assess how students are doing.
This list is not exhaustive, but here are a few of the many learning activities that could be used in your courses:
Interactive presentations or videos
Journaling
Collaborative activities (using Google Docs or Slides, Jamboard, Zoom Whiteboard, blogs, etc.)
Social Media activities (class Twitter feed, Class Instagram, etc.)
Games (quizzes, scavenger hunts, virtual escape rooms, Jeopardy, etc.)
Discussions (using text, audio, video, or external tools)
Worksheets (crossword puzzles, drag-and-drop activities, fill-in-the-blanks, etc.)
Crossword puzzles
For more learning activity ideas, browse through the Wakelet collection below: