Determining learning objectives

The process of determining the learning objectives of an educational product enables a designer to specify exactly what the product will teach participants and what outcomes are supposed to occur as a result of participation. Learning objectives need to be well defined to ensure that each of the project's activities and interactions are focused on achieving these objectives.

About this procedure

Figure 1. Process of determining learning objectives. The process of determining learning objectives is performed by identifying the individual pieces of knowledge, skills, and attitudes within a topic of study. Learning objectives subsequently provide evidence of competency by listing action words where participants do things to demonstrate what they know.

Learning objectives provide evidence for whether the person has learned the desired content within an educational product or experience. A learning objective is always active in that it requires a person to be able to perform some kind of task or demonstration to show that they have learned the content. Learning objectives are constructed from the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are required to be competent in a topic of a subject area.

The process of determining learning objectives in Figure 1 depicts the elements involved with learning objective definition. The process first starts by knowing or defining the subject area and topic that will be used (Step 1). These will define the types of things that need to be learned so that the learner can gain competency in the topic (Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4). Finally, learning objectives are defined using action words so that evidence of whether the person learned can be gained by observing the person's actions (Step 5). In more advanced steps, projects can return to their learning objectives to prevent participants from being overburdened with information and activities in the educational experience and to ensure that they align with the scope of the project as the scope gets progressively defined (Step 6 and Step 7)

Instructions

In the following steps, you can find additional links to sub-steps and tasks. The tasks that first-time instructional designers should focus on are marked with the ✳️ green star emoji. An orange star emoji ✴️ is a more advanced task that will give you a more robust plan and consider more of the aspects that will lead to a stronger product, but beginners can pass on the advanced tasks to keep their planning simpler.

The ❔ Questions to answer sections provide you with prompts and ideas to help you work through and think about each step. If you need inspiration or ideas, consider the questions to answer section and work through each item.

When something says to 📓 Document, be sure to jot down your notes, make lists, and document your work so that you will have a record of your decisions. You will use your notes to specifically develop your design specifications, but the notes may also be useful for any reports, proposals, or other documents that you may need to create that describe your design. Don't forget to include the current date on your notes!

✳️ Step 1: Identify the subject area and topics to be investigated

To help you define strong learning objectives, a good place to start is to consider the subject area and topics that you want your product to feature.

The subject area is the broad discipline or domain that is being studied. It's the traditional "school subject", or in the case of non-school settings, it is a broad area of focus. For example, in school settings, if you teach chemistry, then chemistry is the subject area that you teach in. Similarly, if you teach creative writing, then creative writing is the subject area. In business contexts, sales, finance, and manufacturing would all be subject area examples that you would want to teach employees how to do tasks and learn things.

Within subject areas, a single topic is a broad concept, idea, theme, or skill that people either need to know or be able to do to be competent in the subject area. Topics are the individual components of the larger subject area. Topics are broad enough that there are many different ways to understand the topic, do the work and tasks within the topic, and there are multiple facts, concepts, ideas, and skills that need to be learned to understand the topic.

Unfortunately, there's no one single way to define a topic in a subject area, but each field has multiple topics that are commonly agreed upon. One way of thinking about topics is to envision a textbook intended to teach people on the subject area (be it physics, history, or computer programming). Inside that textbook will be a table of contents. Each item within the table of contents would be a topic within that subject area that the author deemed necessary to include. One common element, though, is that all topics are always included within the broader subject area - multiple topics make up a subject area.

In an example where life sciences is the subject area, individual topics within life sciences could include cellular function, the process of respiration, body systems and anatomy, disease and injury, and life cycles. Each of these examples are complex topics that require people to know knowledge and skills to understand how the topic is related to the life sciences. Moreover, each topic requires a person to understand the material so that they can do work in the field of life sciences.

Therefore, topics are defined by the subject area experts that do work in the field, but also by individual educators who feel some things are important to learn how to know and do.

In another example, if you were teaching a cooking class, cooking would be your subject area - it is very broad and includes many topics within it. Topics within cooking could then include kitchen equipment and its use, chopping and preparation techniques, types of cuisine (e.g., Greek, Italian, Indian), or even the concepts of flavor, flavor mixing, and presentation. Each of these topics involve different types of knowledge, skills, and understandings that need to be learned to be able to master the topic.

A topic can range in what it examines, from very small things to big processes. You define a topic by whether it is composed of multiple facts, concepts, processes, ideas, and perspectives that all need to be understood to be competent with that topic.

In yet another example case, within this wiki, "instructional design" is the subject area that you are currently reading about and "defining a learning objective" is the topic. There are many facts, concepts, and procedures that need to be understood to be competent in the topic of "learning objectives" and how you define them.

Define at least one topic for your design that you are comfortable with, have expertise in (or the team has expertise). For beginners, it is best to focus on just one topic when making a new project. This topic that you define will guide your next steps. Remember, narrowing your focus is best at the beginning, as that helps you get things done!

❔ Questions to answer. To help you in this step, answer the following questions:

1. What subject area do I want to teach with my product (e.g., life sciences, math, economics, politics, writing)?
2. What topics and sub-topics within the subject area do I want the product to focus on?
   1. Topics are pieces of the larger subject area that when they are learned, they will lead to a greater understanding of the subject area.
   2. For instance, if math is the subject area, different topics could include order of operations, algebra, the concept of variables, or balancing equations.
   3. Similarly, if the subject area is history, different topics could be the U.S. civil war, causes of armed conflict, the influence of power and privilege in history.
3. Select 1 topic area for your product to focus on at first. You can select more later if your project scope can support it.

📓 Document the subject area and topics that you choose.

✳️ Step 2: Consider the specific knowledge or facts that you want people to learn

When participating in any educational experience, people often just need to learn about and describe concepts, ideas, categories, facts, terms, definitions, or other items to help them make sense of the topic and be able to do tasks. This is often called descriptive knowledge (or declarative knowledge). Descriptive knowledge is largely the things that are memorized that describe or label things, by using words. People come to understand facts, concepts, and ideas by using language and describing their definitions, often through memorization.

Knowledge items include:

• Facts
• Definitions
• Concepts and their descriptions
• Stories and depictions of events or history, as well as how events are sequenced
• Categories, labels, traits, characteristics of concepts and things
• Memorized information and data
• Opinions

To help you generate the learning objectives for your project, think about what kinds of knowledge is necessary to be skilled in the topic that you chose in Step 1.

❔ To help you in this step, answer the following questions:

1. What specific facts, concepts, ideas, terms, definitions, or other "things" do people need to know to be competent in the topic? We can call these "knowledge items" while you are working on this list. Items in the "knowledge" category are not necessarily things people should do, but should instead know and be able to talk about or describe.
2. Which of these knowledge items will your product try to teach learners? This will always be a smaller list than all of the possible knowledge - you cannot teach everything all at once! The facts and concepts that you choose will be the content of your educational product.

📓 Document the knowledge, facts, terms, ideas, definitions, or other "things" that people should know as a result of using your product.

✳️ Step 3: Consider the skills or behaviors that you want people to be able to do

Skills and behaviors are the actions that people can do. Put another way, skills and behaviors are the verbs (action words) that people perform when they are doing work in the subject area.

Skills and behaviors are also demonstrable, in that a teacher or observer can see people doing the tasks or that these tasks show evidence that they know the skill. Learners may need to have knowledge from items that you determined in Step 2 to perform the skills, so you should also consider what things people need to know to perform tasks and procedures.

Skills commonly include:

• Following procedures to complete tasks
• Solving problems using multiple steps (such as math problems)
• Making things or producing products
• The ability to effectively communicate, write, discuss, or otherwise share information
• Asking questions or generating hypotheses
• Researching and collecting information
• Applying knowledge in new contexts
• Analyzing, comparing, reasoning, inferring
• Interpreting, synthesizing, generating insights
• Planning, goalsetting, self-evaluating

Doing skills and procedures often involve performing a sequence of specific actions that must be taken to complete a task. Just like this checklist that you are reading of "how to determine learning objectives," any skill or task often requires multiple steps to be followed to finish the task.

In this step, identify the specific procedures that you want people to be able to do as a result of their participation in the educational product or experience. This includes "hard skills" that are the specific procedures that are needed to be competent in the topic, such as how to solve math problems, create a working computer program, or performing a lab experiment. Additionally, this also includes the "soft skills" that empower people to be competent in many topic areas, such as how to communicate better, socially interact, or solve problems.

❔ To help you in this step, answer the following questions:

1. What kinds of tasks, skills, or behaviors are necessary for someone to be competent in the topic you are studying?
2. Select a few skills that you would like to focus on in your project. These will be the specific skills in which your educational product will ideally help participants improve their competency.
3. Don't go overboard on selecting skills to teach in your project so that you avoid overwhelming the participants. Teaching even just 1 useful skill makes for a strong and valuable educational product. You can add additional skills if they are related and don't distract the participants too much.

📓 Document the specific skills that you want people to be competent with after participating in your product or experience.

✳️ Step 4: Consider the attitudes, affect, or dispositions that you would like to influence

Educational products can also help develop positive emotional, affective, perspective, and attitudinal changes in participants. By working to improve people's attitudes toward the topic and their dispositions to approaching challenges in positive ways, a learner will find an easier time with learning the knowledge and skills determined in Steps 2 and 3.

Some common attitudinal items that learning experiences help people develop include:

• Attitudes, beliefs, and values about concepts, ideas, and skills, as well as the subject area and topic
• Emotional states, such as happiness, satisfaction, dealing with frustration, and empowerment
• Confidence, self-efficacy, and positive identities related to the knowledge and skills
• Perceptions of the value, relevance, and usefulness of the experience, knowledge, and skills
• Dispositions and mindsets to approach situations in productive ways, such as the use of inquiry, systems thinking, growth mindset, problem solving
• Motivation, interest, engagement, and purpose related to participation

In this step, consider some of the possible aspects of attitude, affect, and disposition that you would like to help your participants develop when they are using your product.

❔ To help you in this step, answer the following questions:

1. How do I want participants to feel after they finish participating? (e.g., empowered, confident, interested, satisfied)
2. How do I want participants to think about themselves after they participate? (e.g., increased sense of identity in the field, reflections of self, ability to take different perspectives)
3. What dispositions do I want to develop in learners when they participate? (e.g., increased chance of using problem solving and inquiry skills, comparing prior experiences with new experiences, using creativity skills, encouraging imagination, positive mindset, growth mindset)
4. Choose 2-3 areas to focus on developing for participants with your product. Although these may not be the primary learning outcomes, you can design the activities with these attitudinal aspects in mind so that you also develop participants' positive dispositions while they participate.

📓 Document the specific attitudes or dispositions that you choose that you would like to see your participants have as a result of participation.

✳️ Step 5: Define learning objectives using action words

Using the knowledge, skills, and attitude items that you defined and documented from Steps 2, 3, and 4, you will now generate learning objectives from each of these.

For every learning objective, you will want to use action words to describe what people should be able to do to meet the objective. This allows for the observation and evaluation of the degree to which people can perform the objective. If they can successfully perform this task, then they have successfully completed the objective!

The successful completion of a learning objective does not have to be a yes/no or binary evaluation. Instead, people can complete objectives with varying levels of quality or success. The evaluation of learning outcomes seeks to identify to what degree people can demonstrate competency with a learning objective.

Writing learning objectives is about finding evidence for whether someone actually knows something, rather than them just saying that they do. By having them demonstrate their knowledge by doing something, this improves the ability for the designer to say that the product actually enables the participants to learn the intended objectives because their actions using the content were observed.

In this step, define at least one learning objective for each knowledge, skill, or affective item that you identified in Steps 2, 3, and 4. For each learning objective, you will find an action word (verb) that corresponds to the item. The person needs to demonstrate this item in some way, so find a learning objective that matches the type of item.

If you are asking someone just to demonstrate their knowledge, consider action verbs that require people to repeat the knowledge (e.g., define, recite, describe, find, recognize, match, memorize).

For skills, ask people to perform those tasks in proper sequential order (e.g., perform, analyze, construct, inspect, research, organize, hypothesize - among MANY others).

Categories of action words for learning objectives

One useful way of thinking about action words for learning objectives is to consult frameworks for categorizing knowledge, such as Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom's Taxonomy is a commonly used framework to consider varying types of actions that learners should be able to perform when demonstrating competency in a topic. Verbs are separated by "objective type"

Figure 2. Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain Learning Objectives (simplified version). Learning objectives are sorted into six different types of activities that people can perform that require different kinds of skills.

Bloom's Taxonomy suggests six types of actions that are required to demonstrate that people know something or can perform skills: (1) knowledge or remembering, (2) comprehension or understanding, (3) application of knowledge, (4) analysis, (5) synthesis, and (6) evaluation. Many adaptations to the framework also add another category of creating to the taxonomy, as generating work products is an important cognitive task required in many subject areas. Each of these categories theoretically require different cognitive strategies and tasks to complete the task, so that is why they are subdivided into categories of their own.

Within each of Bloom's categories, action words that represent that category are found. These action words can be used in learning objectives to make positive statements about what a person can do as a result of their participation with the educational activity. The statement should be positive in that it maintains a positive position (i.e., learners CAN or ARE ABLE do the thing) as opposed to negative (e.g., learners shouldn't make mistakes).

In Bloom's taxonomy, the categories of "knowledge/remembering" and "comprehending/understanding" are both typically associated with someone's ability to remember and recall information or knowledge. If someone needs to remember or know something, the verbs that are associated with these categories are useful for making appropriate learning objectives. Consequently, the "applying knowledge / performing skills" category requires learners to actually perform tasks and use their knowledge. This category is most frequently used to observe people's skills in specific tasks.

For each learning objective that you write, you will want to match an appropriate action word to the knowledge or skill that you wish to teach.

In Table 1, an example set of action words is provided to illustrate the variety of actions that can be done by someone to demonstrate how well they know something.

Table 1. Examples of learning objective action words, as sorted by Bloom's Taxonomy categories

Knowledge, Remembering	Comprehending, Understanding	Applying Knowledge, Performing Skills	Analyzing	Synthesizing, Evaluating	Creating
Cite	Associate	Demonstrate	Detail	Assemble	Adapt
Define	Classify	Examine	Determine	Choose	Combine
Locate	Describe	Illustrate	Contrast	Construct	Collaborate
Match	Discuss	Implement	Compare	Debate	Create
Recall	Explain	Instruct	Correlate	Estimate	Design
Recite	Identify	Modify	Critique	Hypothesize	Generate
Record	Interpret	Practice	Defend	Predict	Model
Recognize	Paraphrase	Perform	Solve	Prescribe	Produce
State	Summarize	Use	Test	Propose	Revise

NOTE: This list is NOT comprehensive. It is just a few of potentially hundreds of learning objective action words that could be used.

➡️ Additional lists of action words for learning objectives are provided in the "External Resources" section below.

Writing a learning objective

Writing a learning objective involves writing a positive statement that documents what a person will be able to do. Using the action word that you determined for each item, write a learning objective that states what the outcome looks like.

Examples of learning objectives (written as positive statements with action words) from many subject areas include:

• (Math) Participants will be able to define prime numbers and how they are different. (knowledge)
• (Communications) Participants will draft a five-minute speech that includes the principles of engaging an audience (knowledge and skill)
• (Literature) Participants will compare and contrast the themes between two different books of the same author to identify common areas of influence (knowledge and skill)
• (Science) Participants will recognize Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics in common everyday situations (knowledge)
• (Science) Participants will compute the chemical compositions of products from reactions when energy and a catalyst are added (knowledge, skill)
• (Science) Participants will perform the six steps of a successful laboratory experiment (skill)
• (Politics) Participants can recognize fact and opinion in political speeches (knowledge, skill)
• (Economics) Participants can define the meaning of Gross Domestic Product (knowledge)
• (Museums) Participants will recognize differences among multiple similar artifacts on display and explain why these differences exist (knowledge)
• (Business) New employees will perform the weekly reporting tasks without any errors (skill)
• (Safety) All participants will perform the necessary steps to evacuate the building in the event of an actual fire (skill - during a fire drill)

Avoid writing statements that simply say people "will know" or "will learn" without any specific actions, as this is hard to measure and observe as to whether the person actually knows it!

For example, instead of this:

❌ Students will know the reasons that led to the start of the U.S. Civil War

Try this:

✔️ Students will describe the reasons that led to the start of the U.S. Civil War

By using the action word "describe" in this case, a teacher or evaluator will be able to observe that the student has the knowledge that is desired, as the student will describe these reasons by using words (either written or spoken), which can later be evaluated.

Similarly, instead of this:

❌ Students will learn how to shoot a basket from the free throw line in basketball

Try this:

✔️ Students will practice and demonstrate shooting baskets from the free throw line in basketball

By using the words "practice" and "demonstrate", a PE teacher will be able to actually observe whether someone is shooting baskets, and can help them better achieve this goal. On the other hand, by just saying "students will learn", there is no evidence recorded and a student can simply say "I learned" to meet the conditions of this goal.

❔ To help you in this step, answer the following questions:

1. How can you pair the knowledge items that you want to teach with action words that can demonstrate that people actually learned them? One way of determining the learning objectives is to make a list of two columns. In the first column, include each item that was determined in Steps 2, 3, and 4. In the second column, you will include a learning objective with an action word that matches the knowledge items that you wish to teach.
2. What kinds of action words can you use to show that students actually learned these things? Consult the "External Resources" section at the bottom of the page for lists of action words that you can use to develop your learning objectives.
3. For the affective areas that you want to help people grow, these are notoriously hard to observe whether someone has improved or not through their activity alone. Unlike knowledge and skills, these are typically measured simply by asking people how they feel (such as in a survey or interview). Because of this, learning objectives for affective areas (and only affective areas) should be stated as people will "increase" or "improve" their affect, attitudes, dispositions, or other attitudinal aspects - no action word is necessary for this because it is very difficult to observe in action because it occurs inside people's heads.

📓 Document a learning objective for each of the knowledge items that you identified in Steps 2, 3, and 4. Each learning objective should be a positive statement about what participants can do, or will be able to do as a result of participating from your product.

✴️ Step 6: Don't overburden learners with learning objectives

Pick only a few specific learning objectives to start with. You can add, remove, or revise learning objectives as you define the scope of the project, design its components and activities, and actually build (i.e., develop) the product.

You want to avoid overwhelming your audience with too many learning objectives and tasks to complete. Find a nice balance of learning objectives based on the scope of your project - such as the amount of time that you have and the setting in which the activities will take place.

❔ To help you in this step, answer the following questions:

1. If you know already, consider some of the other elements of the scope of your project so that your project does not unrealistically expect participants to do too much in the amount of time, space, or setting that is available. If you do not know all of your project's scope yet (which will be done in other steps of the analysis process), it is ok to return to and revise your learning objectives, as well as the lists of topics, knowledge, skills, and attitudes that you defined during Steps 1 through 6 in this procedure

✴️ Step 7: Balance all the learning objectives with the overall scope

Although your project scope may not be well defined yet, you will want to continually be thinking about how your objectives that you define in Steps 1 through 5 are balanced with the project scope. Revise your learning objectives to balance the scope. You can't teach people how to perform complex tasks very well in just a day's worth of learning!

Return to your learning objectives once you have finished determining the other elements of the scope of the project so that you can make sure you don't have too many or too difficult of learning objectives based on your audience, structure, and constraints. Revise or remove any learning objectives that you feel are too burdensome to complete in the scope of your project. You don't want to set the participants up for failure and you don't want to set your project up for failure by overpromising what people will learn.

A simple, well-defined scope and set of objectives is the best option, even for veteran designers!

Examples

None yet - check back soon!

External Resources

• Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain Objectives. Wikipedia.
• Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives. University of Nebraska Medical Center Faculty Development.
• Bloom's Taxonomy of Measurable Verbs. Utica University.
• Verb list for student learning outcomes. Kansas State University.
• How to write measurable learning objectives. EC Learn.
• Writing Learning Objectives. AAMC.
• Learning Objectives Builder Tool. Arizona State University Online.