Framing course aims and learning objectives
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In this page...
What are course aims and why do we need them?
Your course aims are broad statements of what you want to achieve in
your course. They can be fairly general and should give your students an
indication of the scope of your unit and its relationship to other units or
your programme in general.
Sample course aims
Look through some examples of course aims for units in your area:
- Science
- Humanities
- Economics
- Communications
- Biology
What are learning objectives and why do
we need them?
Learning objectives are statements of what you expect your students to
learn as a result of studying your course.
By including learning objectives you will help your students to more
clearly focus on just what it is they need to learn and to demonstrate.
Learning objectives go hand in hand with your assessment tasks - after
all you should be assessing what has been learnt.
Your learning objectives should try to cover these three areas:
| Knowledge |
- which new terms, definitions, procedures do your learners need to
remember?
- in what new ways are your learners expected to explain, interpret or
predict their world?
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| Skills |
- what do you expect students to be able to do with this new knowledge?
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| Attitudes |
- in what ways do you expect to see a shift in your learners' beliefs,
values or concerns?
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Samples of learning objectives
Look through some of the learning objectives in units in your area of interest, and think about how clearly they have been expressed and whether they can be assessed easily:
- Science
- Engineering
- Economics
- Communications
- Biology
Writing learning objectives
Students will have a general understanding of....
What does general understanding mean? How will you know if your
students have achieved this?
Students will appreciate the differences between....
How will this appreciation manifest itself? How will you assess appreciation?
As most learning objectives are concerned with some kind of learning
taking place, they need to be phrased in such a way as to allow you to
measure this. Objectives that focus on knowledge and understanding are on
the right track, but they are impossible to assess. You need to ask
yourself how you'll get your learners to demonstrate or prove their
knowledge and understanding of your course and then phrase your objectives accordingly.
When writing learning objectives you need to be clear, concise and concrete.
Activity
Think about one of your major topics and write some sample learning objectives
for it. You may wish to access this more complete list
of cognitive verbs to help you phrase your objectives.
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