Tips for Crafting Well-Written Learning Objectives
What is a learning objective?
Learning objectives are statements that describe what the learners should know or be able to do at the end of the lesson that they couldn’t do before. Ideally, the students were not able to do a certain skill or do not know a certain knowledge before the lesson. But after taking the lesson, they will be able to achieve it. In other words, the learning objective should answer the question, "What should the students be able to do after taking the lesson?"
One significant characteristic of learning objectives is that they should clearly define the expected outcome of a lesson in terms of demonstrable skills or knowledge that will be acquired by the learners as a result of the instruction provided. Keep in mind the word demonstrable. This means it is something that can be observed on the students and can be easily measured by the teacher. Have a look at the following examples and determine whether the skill or knowledge is demonstrable.
| 1. Acquire a thorough understanding of… |
| 2. Grasps the meaning of … |
| 3. Ask questions related to the… |
| 4. Apply Newton’s Three Laws of Motion in real-life situations… |
If we examine the first statement, one may ask, "How can you know if someone thoroughly understands the topic?" Understanding is something that cannot be demonstrated without doing something like explaining, identifying, describing, or other verbs. Therefore, we can say that the first statement is not demonstrable. It is not readily observed on the students and cannot be directly measured by the teacher unless the students do some explaining or reasoning.
The second statement is the same as the first. Grasping meaning is not a demonstrable skill or knowledge. It would be better to use some other verbs.
The third statement is something demonstrable. So if the students ask a question, then it means the objective is met. The teacher can observe it directly from the students so it is demonstrable.
The fourth statement is a unique one, the verb apply is a demonstrable word. However, if you read the full statement, it is actually difficult to observe the students individually whether they apply the three laws of motion unless it is a laboratory activity that includes performing experiments and the like. Therefore, it would be better to rephrase the learning objective into something like, "Provide or Cite an example of real-life situations that shows the concepts of the three laws of motion."
Why are learning objectives important?
Learning objectives are like a game of darts or a game of soccer. It is the target or the goal that the player is aiming for. In the classroom context, classroom instruction is useless if no goal is targeted or when the target is not achieved.
Learning objectives are targets. They provide directions for the teacher as well as the students. They are guides to avoid being lost in class. This is because if the teacher has a clear focus, both the teacher and the learners can easily get to the goal. Thus, it is important to have well-defined and articulated learning objectives. They not only provide students with a clear purpose on which to focus their learning efforts. They also inform the teacher of the selection of instructional content and activities. Moreover, they guide teachers on the testing and assessment strategies to employ.
How are learning objectives different from educational goals?
They are the same in the sense that they are the target and the guide. However, goals are something that students cannot achieve in one class session, lesson, or grade level. It sometimes requires a team of teachers to achieve a goal. On contrary, learning objectives can be met in one seating and can be achieved even with only one teacher. Learning objectives are also called specific learning outcomes.
7 Guiding Principles in Writing Learning Objectives
Here are some principles that may help to guide you when writing learning objectives.
1. Learning objectives guide instructional activities. So you do not think first of the activity, then think of a learning objective after. Instead, it is the other way around, you must think of what the goal is then think of an activity that will make you achieve that goal. |
2. Learning objectives guide the selection of instructional resources and not the other way around. Same as the first principle, instructional resources are not the first to be accomplished. Rather, you should be guided in choosing the instructional materials by the learning objectives that you have identified. |
3. Learning outcomes guide assessment or evaluation. This is one importance of having learning objectives because the teacher will have a guide in designing assessment and evaluation activities. Learning objectives ensures that there is alignment in the assessment and evaluation activities. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that teachers do not only assess and evaluate their students but also themselves. They must reflect on how well their strategies or methods worked in achieving the objective or what should they improve for the future. |
4. Learning objectives focus on the learning outcomes for students, and not the actions of teachers. That is why it is evident in most objectives that it begins with the phrase, "at the end of the lesson, the students will..." The learning objective is to cater to what the students are expected to do and not what the teachers should do. |
5. Learning objectives are stated as general content, not specific. Read the following example: Compare a fable and a short story vs. Compare the boy who cried wolf and the old man and the sea. When writing objectives, it is best to state them in the general content. The problem if it is specific just like what is in the example is that they may dwell too much on the details about the Boy Who Cried Wolf or the Old Man and the Sea, instead of knowing the characteristics of short story and fable which is the main purpose of the lesson. |
6. Learning objectives are stated as learning outcomes and not as activities. Read again the following example: Student practice for their final presentation next meeting. This example is more of an activity rather than an objective. It would be better to rephrase it like what are the expected skills or knowledge that they are supposed to present. However, other subject courses actually do this. For instance, laboratory courses because they use activity plans instead of lesson plans. So it is okay for them to phrase it like what is in the example. |
7. Only important learning outcomes should be identified. There are skills or knowledge that are already given without identifying them. Have a look at these examples: Students copy the sentences and punctuate them correctly. In this example, it is actually better to omit the phrase copy the sentences because how are they going to punctuate it if they do not copy it? Unless, if writing is part of the learning objectives just like what they do in pre-school. Moreover, the ideal is that there should be a single verb in a learning objective. Students read the selection and identify potential bias on the part of the author. The same as the first example, we can actually remove the phrase read the selection. In the first place, the student really has to read the selection to identify the potential bias. It is already given to read the selection first. |
Important Components of Learning Objectives
There are four components of a learning objective. It is not necessarily required that they are present all the time. The most important is usually the audience and the behavior.
a. Audience
b. Behavior
c. Condition
d. Degree
Read the following example and let us identify the four components:
At the end of the lesson, the students will be able to compute the area of a rectangle with 100% precision.
Now let us identify which is which:
The audience is actually the students.
The behavior in the objective is the will be able to compute for the area of a rectangle.
The condition is at the end of the lesson.
And, the degree is with 100% precision.
To reiterate, it is not required to have the all the components. The most important are the audience and the behavior.
Learning Objectives in Other Domains
What was presented a while ago is for the learning objectives in the cognitive domain. However, there are also other two domains which are the psychomotor and the affective domain. Learning objectives in these domains are sometimes not required because the purpose of lessons usually targets the cognitive domain. For this reason, here are some examples of common learning objectives for the other domains:
1. To listen attentively in class...
2. To respond to questions related to the topic...
3. To ask questions about the topic...
4. To complete a project on the topic...
5. To write legibly...
6. To graph data accurately...
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