Learning Objectives
Learning Objectives define the specific knowledge or skill improvements that students will gain as a result of completing the learning solution.
Objectives can be defined for both the overall learning solution (course, curriculum) down to the individual learning or training activity (if applicable)
The articulation of the learning objectives can help guide the design of the learning solution, hence why there is an emphasis on defining the learning objectives at this point. The learning objectives can also be defined as a result of doing a gap analysis, the difference between the current state and the future (desired) state .
Calling your teaching objectives (what you plan to teach) learning outcomes (what students will learn) demonstrates you don’t really understand how it all works.
— Dr. Gary Ackerman (@GaryAckermanPhD) October 6, 2020
It’s interesting to see that defining learning objectives is a very popular topic among universities and higher education facilities.
For some of us this comes down to semantics, for others there may be specific reasons why a certain term is used to describe the purpose of the learning.
This article is a good reminder about SMART objectives. This way of defining objectives can be true for defining learning objectives, and also overall individual objectives when looking at performance objectives.
What is the difference between Learning Outcomes and Learning Objectives?
A brief introduction to how to write goals, objectives, and learning outcomes for a course syllabus, activity, or project.