Learning Objectives
If you take time to learn something, you want to be able to use that knowledge, right? It seems obvious, but as course designers and authors get caught up in the creation process, sometimes getting back to basics can be refreshing.
An effective learning experience results in learners being able to do something new. The clearest way to to communicate such an outcome is the learning objective. It’s a statement that says, “Hey, you’ll be able to do this when you finish the course!”
Here’s an easy-to-remember acronym for creating compelling learning objectives – ACT. It can help keep outcomes for learners clear and applicable.
A = ACTIVE
Learning objectives must be ACTIVE and measurable. After all, you can SEE and measure an action – you can’t see or measure what someone knows. For example, “At the end of this course, you will know the process of arranging flowers” is not an effective learning objective. It does not tell what you’ll be able to DO. Instead, the objective might say, “you will use the steps of flower arranging to create arrangements.”
The foremost source of action verbs to describe what learners can do comes from Bloom’s Taxonomy. This framework has informed for generations how to measure levels of knowledge.
C = CONCISE
Strive to make learning objectives CONCISE. When they are brief, clear, and specific, learning objectives are easier to understand and attain. Brevity also applies to the number of learning objectives. A single lesson should have one or two objectives. A course, depending on length, may have four to seven or more objectives.
Take this blog article as an example of a lesson. Its learning objective could be “When you complete this lesson, you will be able to describe the attributes of effective learning objectives.”
T = TRUE
Finally, what an objective says someone will learn needs to be TRUE. That means it matches what’s taught in the content. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how some learning objectives miss the mark of what’s actually in a lesson or course.
Demonstrating a skill means learners must somehow show (perhaps through a project or product) and/or be assessed about what they’ve learned. That’s why project steps and quiz questions should be mapped to learning objectives. As you plan a course, try to map out the objectives listed at the start along with the outcomes assessed at the end. Then, craft the content to address these synchronized bookends of learning.
Stay tuned for more brief articles about the details of effective course design.