Speaker 1: Writing strong learning objectives is one of the most important instructional design skills. So whether you're trying to break into the field or just keep your instructional design skills sharp, you're going to want to stay tuned for the video. So let's dive into it. What are learning objectives? Well, learning objectives are for you and they serve as the blueprint for your instructional design. So that's basically it. They're there to guide you and to help you make strong instructional design decisions. The name of the game here is alignment. So you want to make sure that every single thing in your learning experience is aligned to your objectives. So once you've written those learning objectives and you know what you want people to accomplish, you know, when you're writing your content, when you're identifying the practice activities and writing the assessment questions, you want there to be a straight line through the objectives and every single one of those elements. Because if you have some content that's not supporting an objective, why is the content there? And if you have a practice activity that's not helping you practice what it is that you want people to accomplish by the end of the learning experience, there's not much of a point having that practice activity at all. So if you haven't been starting your design with strong objectives, then this is going to kind of change the game a bit for you, I think, because it makes it a lot easier to identify that content and to create those activities and those assessment questions when you can reference an objective right in front of you and design just to support that. So let's dive into how to actually write those objectives. I mean, that's what this is all about. So we're going to start with the stem and I'm going to dive into each one of these, but let's just get a high level overview. So we're going to start with the stem. We're going to use Bloom's taxonomy. We're going to make sure that the objective is measurable and meaningful, and then we're going to include the performance, the criteria, and the condition. All of that is going to wrap up into a really strong learning objective. So let's touch on each of these. So the stem is quite straightforward and it's exactly what you see on the screen here. By the end of this lesson, students will be able to. Okay, that is the stem and you're basically completing this sentence to write your objectives. So for example, students will be able to read a book. Students will be able to tie their shoes. So when we talk about the learning objectives, we're really just talking about these bullet points. What are the things, you know, and these things start with like an action verb or at least a verb. What are the things that people will be able to do once they've completed this lesson or this course or this learning program? Okay, just remember that's the stem. Students will be able to, or people will be able to, employees will be able to, fill in whatever you want there. And these objectives obviously aren't amazing, but those are just fillings. So Bloom's taxonomy. This gets brought up a lot in the context of objectives and for good reason, okay? So Bloom's taxonomy includes all of these really good verbs that we can use to start off our objectives. And they're organized in a pretty useful way. So we use these to write cognitive objectives. We're not really going to use Bloom's taxonomy if we're, you know, if we want to write performance objectives like, oh Devlin will be able to ride a bike. We don't need to use Bloom's for that. But if we need to say Devlin will be able to identify the right kind of bike to ride given the situation, that's where Bloom's comes into play. So for these cognitive tasks for knowledge based objectives. So this right here is a visual representation of Bloom's taxonomy and I took this from the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. This is always just one Google search away. And it's so useful because whenever it comes time to write those objectives, you can just pull up Bloom's taxonomy and the verbs we're looking for are not the ones on the pyramid, okay? We're looking at the verbs to the right of the pyramid, the smaller verbs. So let me move my mouse over them so you can see here. For the remember pillar, we're looking at define, duplicate, so list. And these are how you would start your objectives. So list the criteria, list what makes a good learning objective or define learning objective. You know, this is some very low level stuff. As we move up this pyramid, the idea is that it gets harder, it gets more difficult to achieve these verbs, so to speak. So it's easier to define something than it is to assemble something or design something. So if we're starting at square one, it's going to be a lot easier for us to remember things or understand things and we want to stay away from that understand verb. We'll get into that more later. But it's going to be easier to do these lower level tasks than it will be to do these higher level tasks like appraising or defending or differentiating. So that's the idea here. You can feel free to pause this if you want and look at some of these verbs. But again, this is always one Google search away. And I think that many instructional designers who write objectives like this, they just pull up Bloom's whenever it's time to write objectives. So that's why Bloom's taxonomy is so helpful. All right. So the goal, so again, we're using these verbs off on the right to start off our objective and to identify what it is we want people to accomplish by the end of the experience. But we want to make sure that our objectives are measurable and this is extremely important. This is going to separate good instructional designers to just, you know, instructional designers who don't write great objectives. So the question you want to ask yourself here is how do you know if someone achieved the objective? Okay. So this is why we want to avoid words like understand, learn, know because these things are not measurable. So if we say, you know, by the end of this course Devlin will understand World War 2, that's not telling us a whole lot, right? Like it would be a lot better if we said Devlin won't be able to list three causes for World War 2. Because when we say understand, we don't know, does that mean they understand how World War 2 started? You know, they know which players were involved in World War 2. They know the timelines. They know the major battles. Like what are we talking about when we say understand? So if we can make that more specific and say list three causes or identify the main factions, it becomes a lot easier because then you can ask someone that question. Oh, who are the main players in World War 2 or what caused World War 2? And if people have, if people can give those three reasons, then you know that they satisfied that objective. So that's what we mean by measurable. Can we see someone do it? If we ask someone a question, can we say with a hundred percent certainty? Okay. Yeah, they answered that correctly. So they satisfied that objective. That's our goal with making it measurable. We don't want to say, oh, they'll know about something. We want to use these action verbs so that we can very directly assess whether or not they accomplished that objective. So measurable and the other M word we want to remember here is meaningful. So we don't want people to know things just for the sake of knowing them. Do they need to know it for something that they have to do in real life? So again, in the corporate context, this is on the job. So does this objective support something that they need to do on the job? And if not, then it's probably not a great objective. And again, maybe an objective is to memorize each component of the happy customer model. You know, say we have the happy customer model, just making that up. But let's say it has like certain steps on how to like provide good customer service. That might not seem super meaningful. Oh, we don't need to memorize a model because when we're helping the customers, we need to actually use the model, not just memorize it. But that's where this next bullet point comes in. It's also meaningful if it's an enabling objective and it will bring someone closer to doing what it is that they have to actually do on the job. So maybe we need to memorize that model so that we can actually start using each of those steps. And if that's the case, then maybe it is a meaningful objective. So, you know, either it's directly meaningful and they can use it directly on the job, or it's supporting a bigger objective that they will be able to use on the job. That's how you can determine whether or not it's meaningful. All right, and you don't see this all the time, but there is more to the objective than just the performance component. So we've been talking about the performance component, you know, list three causes of World War II, use the happy customer model to provide good customer service. That's the performance aspect. But we can also talk about criteria and conditions. So these are the three components that make up like a full, complete learning objective if you want to be formal about it. So this is this is one of those full objectives. So given a microscope, identify the nucleus with 90 percent accuracy. So this first piece right here, given a microscope, that's the condition. So under what conditions do we need to do this? Under the conditions of having a microscope. Okay. So next, there is the performance. What is it that people actually have to do? In this case, it is identify the nucleus. And finally, what are the criteria for success? So in this case, we want to make sure that someone can identify that nucleus with 90 percent accuracy. And if they can, then we're considering this this learning intervention a success. So these are the three pieces, the condition and the criteria, those are optional. So, again, you won't see them on many objectives. But if it if it if it is relevant, you know, identify the nucleus with the microscope. Maybe we can even be more specific and we want to make this more challenging by using like a less powerful microscope. I don't know. But you can include those pieces in your learning objective. All right. So there are many common mistakes when it comes to writing these things. One of them is showing these formal objectives to the audience. So if you put this in front of your audience, like, yeah, I guess it's somewhat clear. But people's eyes are going to glaze over like these are for you, like the designer. OK, when it comes time to explain what it is to your audience, like what they're going to learn, you can be much more conversational. So, OK, today we're going to learn how to do, you know, we're going to learn about the nucleus. We're going to learn how to find the nucleus in a cell. You don't need to use this formal Bloom's taxonomy instructional design speak when you are telling your audience what it is they're going to learn. So, yeah, and that's a common mistake. I see that at the beginning of courses sometimes like today you will learn and then it's like a bullet point of objectives like this, like five of them. And no one's reading that. So maybe you stay away from that. Some people use objectives that are not measurable. I see that a lot. I see people use that understand word and fluffy words like that. We want to be we want to use those specific action verbs where when we want to assess whether or not someone has achieved that objective, it's very easy to do so. This is a common one that we haven't gotten into yet, but people often mistake activities for objectives. So, for example, if one of my objectives is by the end of this lesson, students will be able to work in small groups and discuss what caused World War Two. That's not an objective. You know, the objectives are the things we want people to do in the real world once they've completed this learning experience. We're not teaching people about World War Two so that they can go out and discuss it in small groups like the small group discussion is an activity that you're going to complete during the class or whatever it is. But that's not exactly what that's not what it is that you're hoping that the students achieve by the end of the lesson. So, yeah, really ask yourself that question. Is this something that I want people to do during the class to practice or is it something that I want them to actually do on the job? And if it's the latter, that's a good learning objective. And then finally, just having unrealistic expectations. I mean, we looked at Bloom's Taxonomy earlier. If you're if you're reaching for the top levels of that and your audience doesn't already have a lot of that background knowledge, it's not going to be super realistic to address that in like an hour e-learning course. Like, for example, if all if our objective is, you know, by the end of this lesson, students will be able to create an e-learning course. There's a lot that goes into that. So you're probably not going to, you know, move them all the way up, all the way up Bloom's in one hour. Like, almost definitely not. You'll need like a whole learning program to teach someone how to create a learning experience from scratch. So but what I see a lot is that someone will use that objective, you know, you'll be able to design a learning experience and then what they'll actually be designing for are these lower level things like, oh, what is e-learning? Like, what tools can you use? So my suggestion here is just be very specific about what you want people to accomplish up front and don't don't be overly optimistic. Like, don't say you're going to teach them how to design a learning experience if you're just teaching them about which tools they can use to design a learning experience. Just say list three tools that you can use to create e-learning if that's what the real objective is. All right. So now it's time for some fun. It is quiz time. OK, so I'm going to show you a few objectives. So when I show you one, if you want to play along, pause the video and see if you can if you can determine whether or not it's a good objective. So the first one here is pass the Tire Tread 101 quiz by answering at least eight out of 10 questions correctly. So pause the video if you need some time. So this is not a good objective. OK, this is an activity. So we're talking about passing the Tire Tread 101 quiz. This is presumably something you would be doing during the e-learning, you know, during the learning experience. It's a way to get practice or to assess your knowledge during the experience. This isn't what you're going to be doing out in the field. Right. So this one's no good. A better version of this might look something like this. Given a tread depth gauge, identify the tire depth tread with 100 percent accuracy. So now we're touching on what we want people to actually do out there on the job when, you know, maybe there are these tire techs helping customers. We want them to use that gauge, identify that tire depth tread without any errors, and then presumably giving that information to the customer. So this way better than passing a tire tread quiz. That's not what we want people to do on the job. All right, here is the next one. Understand how computers work. You probably didn't need too much time here. This is not a good objective. Again, how are we going to assess whether or not someone achieves this? If we say, oh, how do how do computers work? I could just say, oh, I just plug it in and turn it on. That's how they work. And that's probably not what you would be going for for the learning experience. So this would be a better version of that objective. Explain how the CPU contributes to a computer's successful operation. So you can see we're much more specific here. If we want to assess this, we can just say, hey, how does the CPU contribute to a computer's successful operation? And if they can respond to that, you know, in a logical, factual way, then we know, OK, they accomplished this objective. So there we go. Oh, I have one more for you. So given the soft skills job aid, pass the customer service training scenario with a score of 80 percent. So once again, this is not a good objective. So we have that we have that condition and given this job aid, but our actual performance is past the training scenario. So that's an activity. That's what we're doing during training. That is not what we want people to do on the job. We even have with a score of 80 percent. We have that criteria there, too. But the performance is no good. We want people to actually do something on the job. So for this case, it might be how we're how we're applying that training. So address customer frustration by assuring them that you will help them solve the issue. So we're addressing customer frustration. That's much more meaningful to what it is we're actually doing on the job. So that is all I have for you. I hope that it was helpful. If it was, please go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. And if you're watching this because you're interested in becoming an instructional designer, I have a full video on that topic, which I will link right below this video. So thank you again and I will see you in the next video.