A learning objective is a statement of what a student should be able to do after successfully learning a topic. Well-written learning objectives benefit everyone:

• Students can use learning objectives to guide their study time, and to double-check their own comprehension.
• Instructors can use learning objectives to improve the organization of courses and lectures, and to guide the construction of assignments and exams.
• Colleagues of instructors can use learning objectives to understand what a course covers, to judge whether it is suitable as a pre-requisite, and to prepare to teach the course themselves for the first time.

(Some authors, such as Gronlund (2009), distinguish learning objectives from learning outcomes. We won’t make a distinction here.)

According to Mager (1984), well-written learning objectives address performance, conditions, and criteria.

Performance

A performance is how a student demonstrates their successful learning. To be demonstrable, performances must be observable by instructors. The interior state of a student’s mind is not observable. What the student does in response to a prompt is observable. Well-written learning objectives therefore state what a student can observably do as a demonstration of their learning.

• Bad: The student knows how to multiply polynomials.
• Bad: Understands the FOIL multiplication method for polynomials.
• Bad: The FOIL method is taught.
• Good: Given two polynomials, write the polynomial that results from multiplying them.
• Good: Given two polynomials, multiply them using the FOIL method and write the resulting polynomial.
• Good: Given two polynomials and a list of five more polynomials, select the correct one out of the five that is the result of multiplying the first two.

These objectives are examples of what students can do, and the objectives should be portrayed as such. They represent necessary demonstrations of learning, not sufficient. That is, there might be other demonstrations implied by an objective that a student also could do. The point is to provide sufficient clarity about some desirable demonstration — not to enumerate all desirable demonstrations.

Stating a desired performance takes the demonstration out of the realm of guesswork for a student, or a colleague also teaching the course. It makes learning manifest! It is the most important consideration. But there are two subsidiary considerations: conditions and criteria.

Conditions

A condition is a constraint on the process of the performance. The most common constraints are what is allowed in the performance, versus denied. Possible resources to allow or deny on an exam include:

• Cheat sheets
• Reference manuals
• Open textbooks or notes
• A calculator
• A computer

Or in a lab there could be other considerations: what equipment or tools are usable, the number of tries allowed, etc.

Criteria

A criterion is a means of judging success of the performance. It’s best to characterize a spectrum of how well the performance succeeds, rather than a minimum or perfectionist standards. Possible criteria, independent of the discipline, include:

• Speed, especially in relation to other resources. How quickly do students need to be able to complete a task? Is 5 minutes the max? Or an hour?
• Accuracy. How will you measure closeness of the performance to correctness?

Further Reading

• Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide, chapter 2: “Learning Objectives: A Foundation of Effective Teaching”. Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent. Jossey-Bass, 2016.
• Preparing Instructional Objectives, revised second edition. Robert F. Mager. Pitman, 1984.
• Gronlund’s Writing Instructional Objectives, eighth edition. Norman E. Gronlund and Susan M. Brookhart. Pearson, 2009.