Speaker 1: Welcome to the eLearning Tips and Tools series, Quality Matters, Standards and Action, brought to you by CELT and the Center for eLearning. This series examines ways you can apply Quality Matters standards in your online course to improve learner comprehension, engagement, and ultimately success. This video focuses on specific review standards within General Standard 2, Writing Clear and Measurable Learning Objectives. Specific Review Standards 2.1 and 2.2 emphasize creating measurable objectives for your course as well as for each module. Specific Review Standard 2.3 focuses on creating clear, learner-centered objectives and making sure you place them prominently so your students can locate them easily. Following these standards ensures your students know right away what their goals are as they move through the course. Let's look at how we can implement these standards. When developing your course, imagine a learning journey. The best way to plan your journey is to start with measurable learning objectives. These learning objectives are the destinations on your course map. Course objectives indicate the ultimate destination on your learning journey, and module objectives are those interesting stops along the way. A learning objective describes the action students can do to demonstrate their learning by the end of the course or module. Learning objectives are typically structured as, by the end of the course or module, students will be able to action verb plus object. The action verb refers to the action associated with the intended cognitive process, not the cognitive process itself. The object describes the knowledge students are expected to acquire or construct. A great place to find measurable verbs is Bloom's revised Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain. This hierarchical system, updated in 2001, orders cognitive skills across six levels of learning. Learning at the higher levels depends on having attained prerequisite knowledge and skills at the lower levels. The revised taxonomy emphasizes the actions associated with each level of learning. Each level in this framework has a variety of action verbs related to measurable ways students can demonstrate the related cognitive process. When crafting learning objectives, they should be written to be both measurable and clear to students. In these first two examples, neither the verb learn nor understand are objectively measurable through an assessment. These next two objectives are unclear due to an excessive amount of detail or multiple verbs that fragment the focus of the objective. This learning objective, however, is both clear and measurable. The verb precisely identifies the desired student action and object. Since objectives help guide students through the course, it's worthwhile to wrestle with the language to find the best verb to indicate what level of knowledge or skills you think students should have. Some Bloom's verbs are measurable when used correctly, but should be used cautiously. For example, there are varying definitions of recognize. Make sure you are using it in a way that is measurable. When you are struggling to think of a verb to replace an unmeasurable verb, ask yourself, How do I know my students understand this? Or what will they do to explain what they learned to their friends? Your answer to that question will provide the action verb you need to create a clear and measurable learning objective. For more information about Quality Matters or for support with developing and managing your online courses, please reach out to our team in CELT and the Center for eLearning.