Objectives and Outcomes

When communicating with students, it is critical to discuss the learning objectives and outcomes of the course. These form milestones learners must achieve in order to complete the course successfully. The objectives define what students need to demonstrate to reveal their level of mastery of the topic at course completion. This is not just a matter of providing a proverbial roadmap for completing the course, but is also a key part in motivating students. In general, everyone likes to understand why they are performing tasks and communicating the objectives confers the meaning of the exercises that are being performed. Because of this, it is not surprising that students are more successful when they understand why they are learning content, of participating in particular academic exercises, and how the exercises connect to course outcomes. This offers a framework that makes the necessary work meaningful. This is particularly true with adult learners, who respond best when they know why the learning is required (Wlodkowski, 2008).

Naturally, all course content, learning activities, assessments and other interactions should be aligned with the learning objectives and course outcomes. There should be no busy work, but only meaningful assignments with clearly aligned outcomes. This is just best practice in course design. However, it is not just that the learning objectives are aligned to the assessments and activities. These relationships should be clearly explained to the learners to reveal their relevance to the objectives/outcomes (Knowles, 1984). This will better motivate students and offer guidance to the direction of the course.

Where to begin?

It is easy to get muddled up when presenting the learning objectives thoroughly.  Remember that the objectives should address what learners need to know when they complete the course, or within a module. The aligned activities and assessments will showcase how learners will achieve the objectives. Well written learning objectives have four parts that identify:

1. the learner,
2. the skill the learner must demonstrate,
3. the conditions the learner will demonstrate these skills, and
4. what the criteria are that will measure skill mastery. 

When presenting the material online for students, it is best to conform to medium for expressing them most effectively. In particular, use lists or bullet points to make understanding the objectives simple and visually compelling.  You might find a grid, rubric, concept map, or hierarchy may demonstrate how these objectives work together to accomplish the course goals. Once you have done this, you will want students to be able to access this information in:

• The course syllabus
• Online course information documents (an online deconstruction of the syllabus), and
• Each module’s beginning (the At-a-Glance pages).

Finally, using second person, (you/ your) offers a friendlier tense when communicating with students.  It personalized the statements and is a more affective motivator.

And now the hard part – let’s work on clearly stating the objectives and explaining how the assignments map to them.

References

Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wlodkowski, R. J. (2008) Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, 3rd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.