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Writing course objectives can seem like a very large task, especially if you need to write objectives for a course you haven't taught before. Start by breaking the task down in to these five manageable steps.

Part 1: Envision Large Course Goals
Guiding Questions:

1. Look at the courses that come before yours in your program. What do those courses teach? Where do they stop? They may be a good starting point for your course.

2. At the same time, look at the course(s) that follow after your course. Where do they start? Knowing the courses that come before or after your course will help you situate how your course fits in the sequence amidst prerequisites and precursors.

3. What is the most important concept, idea, or skill for your students to learn in the time they have with you, be it 16 weeks, 10 weeks, or 8 weeks? What is the next most important thing? And the next?...

4. 10 years from now, what do you most want students to remember about your course?

The answers you give to these questions can help you form your course objectives. 

Part 2: Formulate Your Objective

Now that you've got a good idea of the larger course goals that most concern you, turn your focus to what students will need to do to prove that they've learned the content.

For each of those larger course goals, how will you fill-in-the-blanks?

To prove students have learned ___goal___, I need evidence of their ability to __action verb__object__. 

Example: To prove students have learned argumentative writing, I need evidence of their ability to locate credible sources. 

This format for writing objectives pulls from McTighe and Wiggins's Understanding by Design Framework  where curriculum is planned in the following order: 1) Desired Results (goals), 2) Evidence (assessment), and 3) Learning Plan (activities, resources, etc.). Start with the goals of the course, then determine the "assessment evidence" you need to determine if students have learned what you're wanting them to learn, then develop the rest of the activities in the course.

For help with identifying student tasks (the action verb portion of the objective), you can use an objective taxonomy. One taxonomy you may already be familiar with is Bloom's Taxonomy. Visit the resource to categorize and choose your assessment evidence.

Part 3: Flesh Out Your Objectives

• Is there any other evidence you need from students to prove they've learned that goal? You may have multiple statements in support of one goal.

  • To prove students have learned argumentative writing, I need evidence of their ability to locate credible sources.

  • To prove students have learned argumentative writing, I need evidence of their ability to support their claims with evidence.

  • To prove students have learned argumentative writing, I need evidence of their ability to draw logical conclusions about current issues and events.

• Now that you have these written out, try looking at just the verbs and objects:

  • Locate credible sources

  • Support claims with evidence

  • Draw logical conclusions about current issues and events

Keep going with this process until you've mapped out all of the goals you came up with in the first step.

Part 4: Organize Your Objectives

Your list of objectives may end up very long. Keeping in mind that the end goal is around 4-6 main course objectives, the next to last step is sorting, revising, and combining what you've created:

• Are any of the objectives actually steps to learning another concept and are thus better suited as module objectives rather than course objectives (which are higher level compared to module objectives)?

• Are any of the objectives not important enough to be included at the course objective level?

• Are any of the objectives similar to one another and could be combined?

Part 5: Add Details

Once you've sorted through the objectives, you can work on adding details and information to the objectives. The list above may be revised to something like this: 

• Original: Locate credible sources

  • Revised: By the end of the course, students will be able to locate credible sources for use as support in numerous genres of academic writing.

• Original: Support claims with evidence

  • Revised: By the end of the course, students will be able to support main and sub-claims with logical, credible evidence.

• Original: Draw logical conclusions about current issues

  • Revised: By the end of the course, students will be able to use research and critical thinking to draw logical conclusions about current issues.