Writing Course Objectives

With broad course goals (Figure 1 - outcomes) as a starting point, the next step is the development of objectives that are performance based and measurable. Objectives should focus on what the student needs to do and know, not on what content will be covered. Again, the student-centered approach to teaching is evident in this approach to course design. A major obstacle has been stating student learning outcomes in performance terms. This has been a difficult transition in education since many educators have been accustomed to defining their teaching in terms of content area versus student learning outcomes. Objectives (learning outcomes) need to be stated in terms of performance so that in the end the faculty, student, and other interested parties can determine whether the outcomes has been met, or not. Objectives must be measurable and they do not need to be low-level cognitive outcomes.

So, let’s turn to Heinich and colleagues’ ABCD Learning Objective Model, used for writing objectives (https://support.dsu.edu/TDClient/1796/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=148325#:~:text=The%20ABCD%20Model%20of%20Objectives,needs%20and%20environments%20of%20students.) . This model outlines four elements that help to ensure that instruction has both a clear objective and a clearly defined desired outcome.

The four elements are as follows:

1. Audience

2. Behavior

3. Conditions

4. Degree

Let’s look at each of these elements individually.

Audience – The audience describes who the learner is.

Behavior – The behavior is the action, skill, competency, or learning that the audience (the learner) will accomplish as a result of your teaching/activity. (We will review Bloom’s Taxonomy below for examples of power verbs).

Condition – The condition describes the circumstances under which the learning will occur. In other words, it describes required resources or materials the student would need to access when completing the task.

Degree – The degree describes the level of mastery the student must demonstrate to indicate he/she successfully mastered the objective.

Next, let’s look at an example of how to put the ABCD model into action! Table 4: ABCD Learning Objectives Model Exercise

Next, we will explore Bloom’s Taxonomy, a hierarchical framework that helps educators organize and structure learning objectives based on their level of complexity and specificity. An excellent overview of the history of this longstanding taxonomy can be found in a piece written by Mary Forehand.¹² In Forehand's overview, Bloom’s Taxonomy is defined as a multi-tiered model for classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating). In this taxonomy, Bloom attempts to organize learning into levels according to the sophistication of mental effort necessary to meet a given goal. During the 1990s, a group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists, instructional researchers and testing and assessment specialists convened to discuss the revision of Bloom’s original taxonomy. The result of their efforts was published in 2001 and remains pertinent today.¹³  Figure 3 illustrates the original and revised taxonomies. The most obvious difference between the old versus the new version is that the six major categories were changed from nouns to verbs. The reasoning behind this change was to be able to write objectives where the verb illustrates an observable action by the learner. For example, Knowledge was changed to Remembering, Application was changed to Applying. Comprehension and synthesis in the old version were renamed to understanding and evaluating, respectively. Finally, where originally the evaluation category was at the top of the pyramid, the new version has placed creating at the top. A list of action verbs can be found in Table 4. While it is not within the scope of this learning module to fully describe the process of revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy, there are many excellent resources on the internet to assist the reader in more fully understanding this revision and subsequent development.

Figure 3. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning.