Crafting Effective Learning Objectives

Articulating specific learning objectives is an essential first step when designing a course. How will students have changed after learning with you in a course? What questions will they know to ask, and what skills will they have developed in order to explore those questions? Addressing these course goals often begins well before the semester starts. Once you’ve drafted strong learning objectives, aligning subsequent assignments, activities, and assessments with the objectives can help you and your students achieve success. 

Attributes of Effective Learning Objectives 

Consider looking at your learning objectives through the lenses of: 

• Measurability: write the learning objective in a way that can be measured or observed 
• Authenticity: consider how this knowledge will be applied in real-world contexts
• Depth of Knowledge: use Bloom’s Taxonomy to build learning objectives and lay the foundation for the assessment of those objectives 

Some things to keep in mind: 

• Bloom’s Taxonomy is hierarchical, so higher levels of learning are dependent on the learner having acquired knowledge and skills from the lower levels. This does not mean that you must have a learning objective at every level. 
• You will have 3-6 learning objectives for your course, which may mean that your course-level learning objectives are somewhat broad. Use your module-level objectives to dig even deeper into specifics.

For additional support, explore a resource on using Bloom’s Taxonomy.  

Critiques of Bloom’s Taxonomy 

Scholars have critiqued the way Bloom’s Taxonomy is sometimes interpreted, including the implication that learning is a linear process. Further, the placement of remembering at the bottom of the pyramid as a “lower-order” skill implies less value or that it should be avoided. Read an article for additional critiques.  

Revising Learning Objectives 

Consider using the lenses of measurability (M), authenticity (A), and depth of knowledge (D) to revise your learning objectives. Consider the real example objectives below, which were taken from an introductory course on educational technology for future and current teachers: