What are Learning Objectives?

Learning objectives guide your course design. They are the destinations on your course map. Once you know where you're going, the other questions, "How will I know when students got there?" and "What can I do to help them get there?" become much easier to answer.

One of the major challenges of teaching online is that everything has to be more explicit than in a face-to-face course because the usual channels (your tone of voice, repeated vocal reminders, informal conversations before and after class) are absent. Online, learning outcomes express your expectations to your students. They are (hopefully) clear messages that help students know what you expect from them and what they should spend their time practicing and studying.

Learning outcomes focus on specific knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that you expect your students to learn, develop, or master (Suskie, 2004). They describe both what you want students to know AND be able to do at the end of the course.

Learning objectives need to specify student actions that are observable and measurable. That way they can be assessed in an objective manner. "Students will appreciate the beauty of impressionist paintings" isn't an effective learning outcome because it's not measurable. On the other hand, "students can identify impressionist paintings and accurately describe criteria for classifying paintings in the impressionist style" is a learning outcome because you can observe and measure the students identifying impressionist paintings and describing criteria.

In addition to being observable and measurable, learning outcome statements have to focus on student action. They are about students showing what they have learned, not about the instructor describing how they are teaching. For example, "The students can accurately describe the process of photosynthesis" is a learning outcome while "I will show a PowerPoint presentation on photosynthesis and give the students a quiz" is not.

This website resource provides illustrative examples of measurable objectives.
It is important that you review this website for this module's quiz.

How do I write good learning objectives?

In their basic form, learning outcomes are typically structured as

[verb] + [object].

The place where learning outcomes often fall short is the verb, the action that students will do to demonstrate their learning. Often instructors use "know" and "understand;" neither of which are directly observable or measurable. Instead, consider verbs that can measure knowledge and understanding. For example, will students write, identify, or analyze something? Is it enough for students to be able to list the steps in the Krebs cycle or should they be able to describe the steps of the Krebs cycle? The decisions you make now have a significant impact throughout the rest of the course design process, so it's worthwhile to wrestle with the language to find the best verb to indicate what level of knowledge or skills you think students should have.

We recommend starting your verb search with "Bloom's Taxonomy" (which was actually written by Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl). The original taxonomy from the 1950s was revised in 2001. For information on the differences between the original the revised version, Anderson and Krathwohl - Understanding the New Version of Bloom's Taxonomy provides a nice description. Even though most instructors focus on the cognitive domain levels (Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create), there is a second axis to the taxonomy - the Levels of Knowledge. These include

Factual knowledge
Conceptual knowledge
Procedural knowledge
Metacognitive knowledge

Use learner-centered language

Learning objectives are only useful if new learners can easily understand them. They should articulate concrete gains in knowledge and skill, and provide learners with a standard against which they can measure their progress (e.g., by asking “can I do this yet?”) throughout the course. Define objectives in simple, clear language, and avoid jargon or references to advanced topics.³

Be specific and measurable

Use specific, action-oriented verbs, and think about how learner success will be measured against the objective. For example, “Solve a simple linear equation” is a specific, action-oriented, and measurable objective; “Understand basic linear equations” is vague and difficult to measure.⁴ Understand can mean very different things to different people, whereas it is easy to say, “Yes, I can solve that equation.” You should be able to identify how learners will demonstrate every objective.

Things to avoid

Do not confuse learning processes (e.g., completing an internship or an assignment) with learning objectives (what is learned in the internship/application of theory to real world practice). Learning objectives are not:

Descriptions of learning activities (learners will write a report).
Descriptions of course content ("You will be introduced to the field of psychology…").