How to write effective learning objectives

We write learning objectives for our courses every day. I have observed a lot of Instructional Designers write the learning objectives after completing the storyboard, just to fill the space. This is obviously not the correct practice.

However, I can’t blame them since writing objectives is rarely covered in details during ID training, apart from emphasizing that each sentence should start with an actionable verb.

In this post I will cover the basics of writing effective learning objectives.

A well written learning objective should consist of three parts, performance, condition and criterion.

A learning objective should describe:

• What the learner will be able to do after completing the session. This part is known as performance or behaviour.
• Under what constraints the learner demonstrates the expected performance or behaviour, known as condition.
• At what point the performance is acceptable. What are the standards of acceptance? This part is known as criterion.

For example, “At the end of this session you will be able to describe at least 10 unique features of the Speedo Bike, without referring to the sales manual.”

Here:

• Performance is that you will be able to describe the unique features of the Speedo Bike.
• Condition is that you cannot refer to the sales manual
• And the criterion is that you should be able to describe at least 10 unique features

A non example will be, “At the end of this session you will understand why Speedo Bike is unique.”

You can clearly see that in the later example it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of the training.

To sum up while writing learning objectives it is important that we pay attention to describe the expected behaviour, clearly state the conditions and describe the acceptable performance criteria.

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