If a seasoned instructor or instructional designers wants to determine whether your training looks “worth it”, they are going to look at one thing right away: your objectives – also often referred to as “course outcomes”. These are those unassuming but powerful little things you’ve advertised that people will learn from your course. And you’ve got just 3 seconds to impress with them.
If you’ve ever used any of these words in your objectives/outcomes, you need to read this blog post:
- Understand
- Recognize
- Know
- Appreciate
- Learn
You’re nodding? Yep, these words are found OFTEN in our course objectives, and they really have no business being there. Course objectives should tell the learner (or other stakeholder) what they will be able to do after completing the course. Go back and read that list again. Have you ever tried to see whether another person can do any of these things? How would you know? All of those words describe things that happen on the INSIDE of another person. Think about it, how do you know if they appreciate something? How do you know if they learned? Now look at these alternatives:
- Describe
- Define
- Explain
- Discuss
- State
Much easier to see these things, right? It’s because these words describe things that happen on the OUTSIDE of another person. You can actually see them describing something, or discussing, etc. So, in the first list, when I asked how you knew if another person had learned something, you might have thought to yourself, “well because they can…” the very next word is the one you want to use in your objective: “…because they can write clear objectives”. Excellent! Let’s look at the difference:
By the end of this blog post, learners will be able to:
- Appreciate the importance of clear objectives, or
- Write clear objectives
See the difference? Which one tells a better story about what you will learn? Let’s be even more obvious about it:
- Understand how to ride a bike
- Ride a bike
You can actually tell what the learning is going to look like in the second objective (there are going to be bikes in this training session, right?) The first objective isn’t necessarily as clear.
When writing your objectives, make sure you’re using words that you can see happening, on the outside of your learners. Why? Firstly, because then YOU will know whether learning happened, and can therefore confidently assure your client or boss (or your learner’s boss) that it did. But secondly, and possibly more importantly, because your learners can also see that they are learning. They can see their newfound skills, rather than cross their fingers and hope they got it – and hope even harder that if they didn’t, no one notices!
If you’re looking for some excellent verbs to use in your objectives, Google “Bloom’s verbs” and you’ll instantly have access to thousands! And, using these clear objectives will make your learners happy, boost your confidence, and all of a sudden, you’ll see other instructional designers sitting in on your classes, because they will know, that you know your stuff!
Happy objective writing!
Three Sixty Learning 