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 content, learning activities and assessment tasks. That is, they are congruent. After all you should be assessing what has been learnt. This congruency is what is meant by aligned curriculum.

Your learning objectives will cover:

• Knowledge - cognitive objectives.

Additionally, your learning objectives may include:

• Attitudes - affective objectives; and
• Psychomotor skills - psychomotor skill development objectives (eg. laboratory techniques, chiropractic palpation skills).

Writing learning objectives

Examine the following examples of learning objectives.

Students will have an understanding of cells.

What does understanding mean? How will you know if your students have achieved this?

Students will appreciate good laboratory practice.

How will this appreciation manifest itself? How will you assess appreciation?

Compare them with the following:

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

• Describe the nature and functions of cells.
• Consistently display safe, systematic and accurate laboratory practice.

Here are some more examples of learning objectives.

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

• Use a variety of equipment and techniques for the examination of cells and the collection of data.
• Prepare written laboratory reports that record observations, indicate analysis and present conclusions.

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 will get your learners to demonstrate or prove their knowledge and understanding of your unit and then phrase your objectives accordingly.

When writing learning objectives you need to be clear, concise and concrete.

Because the objectives are for the learner, write them so that they address the student as “you”.

See below links for verbs you can use when writing learning objectives:

Verbs for cognitive objectives

Verbs for affective objectives

Verbs for psychomotor skill development objectives

Other resources:

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

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