Writing Learning Objectives

Weekly learning objectives should be narrow, discrete intentions of student performance.  Unlike institutional and program level outcomes that are written from the faculty’s point of view, weekly learning objectives should be written from the student’s point of view.  Your weekly learning objectives should be:

• Narrow, specific statements about what is to be learned and performed
• Precise intentions
• Tangible
• Concrete
• Can be validated or measured
• Written after analysis
• Prepared before instruction is designed

Well-stated objectives clearly tell the student what they must do by following a specified degree or standard of acceptable performance and under what conditions the performance will take place. In other words, when properly written, objectives will tell your learners exactly what you expect them to do and how you will be able to recognize when they have accomplished the task.  Generally, each week will have 3-5 learning objectives (Penn State University, n.p.).  Weekly objectives must also align with overall course outcomes.

Educators from a wide range of disciplines follow a common learning objective model developed by Heinich (as cited by Smaldino, Mims, Lowther, & Russell, 2019). This guide will follow the ABCD model as a starting point when learning how to craft effective learning objectives.

ABCD Model of Learning Objectives

1. Audience: Who will be doing the behavior?
2. Behavior: What should the learner be able to do? What is the performance?
3. Condition: Under what conditions do you want the learner to be able to do it?
4. Degree: How well must the behavior be done? What is the degree of mastery?
   

Behavioral Verbs

The key to writing learning objectives is using an action verb to describe the behavior you intend for students to perform. You can use action verbs such as calculate, read, identify, match, explain, translate, and prepare to describe the behavior further. On the other hand, words such as understand, appreciate, internalize, and value are not appropriate when writing learning objectives because they are not measurable or observable.

If the behavior is covert or not typically visible when observed, such as the word discriminate, include an indicator behavior to clarify to the student what she or he must be able to do to meet your expectations. For example, if you want your learners to be able to discriminate between good and bad apples, add the indicator behavior “sort” to the objective: Be able to discriminate (sort) the good apples from the bad apples.

Some instructors tend to forget to write learning objectives from the students’ perspective. Mager (1997) contends that when you write objectives, you should indicate what the learner is supposed to be able to do and not what you, the instructor, want to accomplish. Also, avoid using fuzzy phrases such as “to understand,” “to appreciate,” “to internalize,” and “to know,” which are not measurable or observable. These types of words can lead to student misinterpretation and misunderstanding of what you want them to do.

Using action verbs enables you to more easily measure the degree to which students can do what you expect them to do.  Articulating your learning objectives at the appropriate level can be challenging at first.  Here are some resources to help get you started.^[1]

• List of Action Verbs (PDF)- This document provides a list of action verbs for Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Samples of learning objectives by discipline
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning
• Krathwohl’s Affective Domain
• Writing Learning Outcomes Interactive Tool

The Link Between Learning Objectives and Course Activities and Assessment

After you have crafted your weekly learning objectives, it is time to design course activities and assessments that will tell you if learning has occurred (more about this in the next chapter). Matching objectives with activities and assessments will also demonstrate whether you are teaching what you intended. These strategies and activities should motivate students to gain knowledge and skills useful for success in your course, future courses, and real-world applications. The table below illustrates objective behaviors with related student activities and assessments.