Creating Course-level Learning Objectives

Owned by Rob Caldwell
Last updated: Jun 12, 2023
6 min read

When you write your course learning objectives, be sure to review your Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions for your course. These should help guide you as you create course-level learning objectives. The essential questions, for example, may help you identify a course learning objective you previously omitted.

Keep in mind, course-level learning objectives are measurable and describe what students can expect to learn as a result of successfully completing the course. They are the "essential" outcomes of the course. They are "bigger" than the unit-level outcomes, since unit outcomes should all support the course outcomes.

For example, in an English grammar course, if one of the course outcomes is:

  • Demonstrate mastery of rules of punctuation

The unit-level outcomes that support this course outcome may be:

  • Demonstrate correct use of commas, semicolons, and periods

  • Produce writing in which apostrophes are used only when needed

  • Construct written quotations in which double and single quotation marks are used properly.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LEARNING OBJECTIVE?

Learning outcomes should be observable and measurable.

In addition to being observable and measurable, learning outcome statements have to focus on student action.  They are about students showing what they have learned, not about the instructor describing how they are teaching.  For example, "The students can accurately describe the process of photosynthesis" is a learning outcome while "I will show a PowerPoint presentation on photosynthesis and give the students a quiz" is not. 

Avoid terms that are open to interpretation (e.g., understand, learn, or know). These terms are not measurable. An instructor cannot create an assessment to evaluate whether the student "understands" the concept. Look at the following example of learning objectives:

By the end of the course, you will ...

  • Understand the Civil War.

  • Describe the impact of the Civil War on the Southern economy.

The first example is vague and not measurable. There is no way to assess whether students understand the Civil War?  In the second example, the instructor can evaluate or observe that the student is able to "describe the impact of the civil war on the Southern economy."

Notice also that we used the word "you" instead of "student" in the learning objective. Students have been shown to do better when objectives are written so as to address them personally, rather than address an unknown "student."

A measurable learning objective or competency:

  1. Completes this sentence: Upon completion of this course/ module, students will be able to (DO SOMETHING).   

  2. Begins with an action verb. Consider Bloom's Taxonomy when choosing action verbs.

  3. Precisely describes behavior that can be observed or evaluated (is measurable).

UTILIZING BLOOM'S TAXONOMY TO HELP WRITE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The diagram below lists Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

Consider Bloom's Taxonomy and Higher Order Thinking Skills when designing your learning objectives. Use verbs that encourage hands-on critical thinking at the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. 

By taking the time to carefully craft your learning objectives in the beginning of course development, you ensure that your course has a clear roadmap to follow. By putting more focus on higher levels of cognition such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, you help ensure assignments and assessments focus on more than rote memorization of facts.

According to Benjamin Bloom, there are six levels of cognition, each one on a higher level than the other:

  1. Knowledge - which involves rote memorization or recall of facts

  2. Comprehension - understanding what the facts mean

  3. Application - correct use of facts or ideas

  4. Analysis - breaking information down into its component parts

  5. Synthesis - combination of facts, ideas or information to make a new whole

  6. Evaluation - judging or forming an opinion on information or a situation

Ideally, your course should contain learning objectives that touch upon each level of cognition, with special emphasis given to the higher levels. 

Try not to over-rely on the lower levels of cognition when creating learning objectives. Avoid overusing words like: memorize, recall, or understand. Instead try to use words such as: determine, modify, analyze, outline, etc.

LINKS: 

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.