Learning Objectives

Course learning objectives are specific outcomes — ascertainable competencies, knowledge, and even attitudes or values that you hope your students will have after taking your course.

CTL video on aligning course with learning objectives

For instructors, articulating the course learning objectives can help clarify your expectations for the course and guide you as you develop the course. Referring to your course learning objectives as you create lectures, assignments, and assessments helps to keep all of these teaching components conceptually aligned.

For students, learning objectives describe exactly what they can expect from your course and they provide a rationale for the work you’ll ask them to do.

Bloom’s Taxonomy as a Framework for Writing Learning Objectives

The revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956) provides a good framework for starting to write your learning objectives. The verbs listed below show a hierarchy of increasing complexity from left to right.

↓ What is Bloom's Taxonomy?

In brief, in the 1940s a group of educators began to develop a classification system for educational learning objectives for three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The work on the cognitive domain resulted in a book titled a Taxonomy of educational objectives; the classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners (B. Bloom et al, 1956). This work is now commonly referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy.

These taxonomic models present a hierarchical classification of learning objectives that, reading from left to right, successively become more complex and specific.

Originally, the cognitive domain was ordered as follows:

Knowledge | Comprehension | Application | Analysis | Synthesis | Evaluation

In 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl et al published a revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy, A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (2001), that reflects new research and presents the taxonomy shown below.

Remember Understand Apply Analyze Evaluate Create
Choose
Describe
Define
Label
List
Locate
Match
Memorize
Name
Omit
Recite
Select
State
Count
Draw
Outline
Point
Quote
Recall
Recognize
Repeat
Reproduce
Classify
Defend
Demonstrate
Distinguish
Explain
Express
Extend
Give Examples
Illustrate
Indicate
Interrelate
Interpret
Infer
Match
Paraphrase
Represent
Restate
Rewrite
Select
Show
Summarize
Tell
Translate
Associate
Compute
Convert
Discuss
Estimate
Extrapolate
Generalize
Predict
Choose
Dramatize
Explain
Generalize
Judge
Organize
Paint
Prepare
Produce
Select
Show
Sketch
Solve
Use
Add
Calculate
Change
Classify
Complete
Compute
Discover
Divide
Examine
Graph
Interpolate
Manipulate
Modify
Operate
Subtract
Categorize
Classify
Compare
Differentiate
Distinguish
Identify
Infer
Point out
Select
Subdivide
Survey
Arrange
Breakdown
Combine
Detect
Diagram
Discriminate
Illustrate
Outline
Point out
Separate
Appraise
Judge
Criticize
Defend
Compare
Assess
Conclude
Contrast
Critique
Determine
Grade
Justify
Measure
Rank
Rate
Support
Test
Combine
Compose
Construct
Design
Develop
Formulate
Hypothesize
Invent
Make
Originate
Organize
Plan
Produce
Role Play
Drive
Devise
Generate
Integrate
Prescribe
Propose
Reconstruct
Revise
Rewrite
Transform

To begin writing learning objectives that are practical for you, try this exercise:

Make a list of concrete knowledge, skills, or competencies you wish students to gain from taking your course. Try to keep the ideas on your list specific, observable, and measurable as well as aligned with your department’s expectations for the course. Start with a stem sentence that begins…

At the conclusion of the course [or unit or module], students should be able to…

…and then, referring to Bloom’s taxonomy, choose a verb that is specific and measurable, for example, “At the end of this module, you should be able to list and describe five [insert the knowledge here].”

Consider the level of achievement you expect for each item on the list, and whether students will be expected to achieve it with or without aids (e.g. dictionary, reference guide, etc.).

For each element of your course, ask yourself:

  • Does this course content (or activity, practice, assessment, or feedback) support one or more specific learning objective?
  • Then reverse the question when reading through the objectives: Is this objective being supported through specific course content, etc.?
  • Is this objective being evaluated at the point in the course where students are expected to have achieved it? Prior to that?
  • Are students made aware of how each element of their coursework relates to their achievement of a course objective?

Resources

Download this course planning grid to check alignment as you design your course: Word doc or PDF

References

Bloom, B. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives; the classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Benjamin S. Bloom, editor [and others. (1st ed.].. ed.). New York: Longmans, Green.

Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman.