Learning objectives and outcomes
From The Learning Engineer's Knowledgebase
Learning objectives or learning outcomes are the intended results of an educational product or experience.
Definition
A learning objective is a written statement of what a participant is intended to achieve or perform after participating in an educational experience or using an educational product.
➡️ A step-by-step walkthrough on writing learning objectives is provided on the "Determining Learning Objectives" page.
Additional Information
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.
➡️ A step-by-step walkthrough on writing learning objectives is provided on the "Determining Learning Objectives" page.
Types of Learning
There are varied types of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions for which an educational product will attempt to teach. Learning objectives are written based on the types of learning outcomes and development that are sought by the designer of the product.
Descriptive knowledge (facts). 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.
Descriptive 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
Procedural knowledge (skills). Skills and behaviors are the things or 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. Unlike knowing what knowledge is inside a person's head, a person can instead observe a task being performed. Learners may need to have knowledge from items that you determined in Step 2 to perform the skills, so designers should also consider what things people need to know to perform tasks and procedures.
Skills and procedural knowledge 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 also often involve performing a sequence of specific actions or multiple steps in order that must be taken to complete a task.
Attitudes, Affect, and Emotion. 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 or affective 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, skills, and domain
- 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
Learning Objectives as Active Demonstration (Using Action Words!)
For every learning objective, veteran designers prefer to use action words to describe what people should be able to do to meet the objective. This allows for someone to actually observe the degree to which people can perform the objective, rather than simply ask someone if they feel like they learned. If participants can successfully perform the tasks outlined in the learning objectives, 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.
➡️ A step-by-step walkthrough on writing learning objectives is provided on the "Determining Learning Objectives" page.
Bloom's Taxonomy of Active Learning Objectives (Cognitive Domain)
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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"
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.
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.
| 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.
➡️ A step-by-step walkthrough on writing learning objectives is provided on the "Determining Learning Objectives" page.
➡️ Additional lists of action words for learning objectives are provided in the "External Resources" section below.
Primary and Secondary Objectives
Sometimes, learning objectives are prioritized based on primary and secondary status. A primary learning objective is a main or most important learning objective that should be prioritized for participants' learning. The primary learning objective is the one that is prioritized in the design and activities in the educational product should all support the achievement of the primary objective.
Achievement of the primary learning objective(s) is the primary indicator as to whether an educational product worked as intended or had met its intended outcomes. Therefore, most of the evaluation efforts for an educational product will assess whether people learned the primary learning objective as to make claims that the product had the desired primary, prioritized effects.
Secondary learning objectives are those that would be nice to also achieve when participants use an educational product, but is generally acceptable if it is not achieved.
Tips and Tricks
- For a step-by-step walkthrough on how to write learning objectives for an educational product design, review the page on determining learning objectives.
- Learning objectives should always be written by using active words to describe the objective. This way, a person can show evidence of how they have knowledge or can perform a skill.
Related Concepts
- Determining learning objectives
- Knowledge of the learner (KAB)
- Behavior of the learner (KAB)
- Attitudes and affect of the learner (KAB)
- Evaluation and assessment
- Research question
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.