Course Development

Part V: Creating Learning Objectives

When you begin to develop your class or module objectives, distinguish between teaching objectives (what you will teach and how you will organize the information) and focus on learning objectives. When you identify your learning objectives, you will have defined what the learners need to know and what they will be able to do. This will also help you determine the best strategy for assessment (i.e. what type of questions on your quizzes or what activities will measure the objective).

Ask yourself this basic question and record your answers: What do the learners need to be able to do after instruction that they cannot do now?

A learning objective should identify a learning outcome that describes student performance in specific, observable, and measurable terms.

Write your instructional content to prepare your learners to achieve the tasks/skills you have identified.

Poor objective:
The learner will appreciate the importance of having good communication with the patient's family.

Good objective:
The learner will be able to describe the 5 basic principles of sound communication with the patient's family.
AND
The learner will be able to describe 4 primary potential positive outcomes of good communication with a patient's family.

So what's the difference?

1. You cannot measure appreciation (poor objective).
2. You have identified the basic principles (the 5 you will teach) of sound communication (good objective) and will be able to measure the learners' knowledge by the information they include in their definitions of these principles.
3. You have not identified outcomes of good communication (poor objective).
4. You have identified the benefits of good communication (you will teach them) and will be able to measure the learners' understanding by the points they include in their description of the benefits.

As the good objectives above indicate, using learning objectives may mean breaking one issue into several objectives. Each objective should address only one learning outcome. This ensures that each is both taught an assessed. This also makes your teaching easier. Sound learning objectives are your map to developing instruction and assessment.

To write learning objectives for Bloom's 3 domains of educational activities (cognitive, affective, psychomotor) and the categories developed for each, refer to Bloom's Taxonomy.

For developing more specific performance objectives, click here.

Contact CITES to tailor objectives to your specific needs or strategies for assessing your objectives.

Part VI: Suggestions for Online Modules and Courses >>

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