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How to Increase Student Learning through Clear Learning Objectives
Copyright to Stronge & Associates Educational Consulting, LLC, 2020
Permission to use this material within the recipient schools is granted with the requirement that the copyright notice is included.
What is a learning objective and what do we know about it?
There is ample research evidence to support the importance of well-designed and clear student learning objectives (Faulconer, 2017). Learning objectives are statements that describe what students are expected to achieve as a result of instruction. Learning objectives explicitly define the expected learning and make the learning process goal directed. Objectives should be planned in advance as they sharply focus instruction and learning and make instructional time more productive. They also allow students to have a vision of where they are heading, study more efficiently, and reduce time wasted on irrelevancies. If students don’t understand what they should be able to know and do by the end of class, then it is more difficult for them to get there. In essence, statements of learning objectives can make students visualize what to conquer and what to accomplish (Bates, 2016).
As many schools are implementing  hybrid teaching (a mix of classroom and virtual teaching), clear objectives are particularly important for successful online learning. Since it is more challenging to organize online learning than traditional face-to-face instruction, well-defined learning objectives can play an important role in structuring the learning and giving students a sense of direction with their learning as they will have a clearer understanding about what they are expected to accomplish after a certain period of time.
How to improve your learning objective statements?
Learning objectives provide information about what is to be learned and the way in which students will demonstrate adequate learning. Let’s look at some of the attributes of effective learning objectives.
Student-centered and active. Good learning objective statements focus on student performance. This means they focus heavily on students’ behaviors and what students are able to do at the end of the study unit, not on behaviors of the teacher or the procedure of learning. In other words, they are learner-centered versus being teacher-centered. Additionally, they should be statements of learning outcomes, rather than the process or activities students will be doing (Fisher et al., 2017; Jones & Edwards, 2017). One way to structure a student-centered and outcome-based learning objective is to think from the students’ perspective and use sentence stems such as “by the end of the lesson I will….” Action verbs that are specific and assessable, such as match, identify,  describe, compare, explain, apply, and infer, frequently are used in learning objectives to state the behaviors students will be expected to demonstrate after learning. The learning objectives can be a combination of surface and deep learning, or a combination of conceptual ideas and procedural skills. An example: “At the end of the lesson, I can construct linear equations using slope-intercept form to represent the relationship between two quantities from context.”
Coherently aligned. When structuring a learning objective, it is helpful to ask the following questions to make sure the whole planning process is consistent:
- Are the learning objectives appropriately challenging and are they aligned with the curriculum standards?
- Do the students understand and are they able to articulate the objective in their own words?
- Will the learning activities and classroom experience help students accomplish the learning objectives?
- Will students’ mastery of learning objectives be measured? And will the assessment data used to improve instruction to help students move closer to the goal? (Hattie, 2012)
In other words, learning objectives should be in congruence with the intended curriculum/content, your instructional strategies and activities, and the assessment of student learning.
Clearly communicated and student-owned. For learning objectives to have an impact on assessment, they must be well-defined and explicitly shared with students. If the learning objectives are not clearly communicated to and understood by the students, then the students are less likely to appreciate how the learning activities will serve to enhance their learning, and the assessment will also seem to be irrelevant. Wiliam (2011) insightfully commented that “not all students have the same idea as their teachers about what they are meant to be doing in the classroom” (p. 52). Therefore, learning objectives should be written for the students or by the students. They should describe the expected learning in student-friendly and developmentally-appropriate language. Learning objectives also provide a benchmark against which students can objectively evaluate their own progress. When students know what they are meant to learn and how they will be asked to perform after the lesson, the learning activities and process will become obviously meaningful, and the related assessment also will become a meaningful check of the quality of learning (Brookhart, 2011; Brookhart & Moss, 2014; Plaza, 2020). When the objectives are understood and internalized, students can use them to guide their learning efforts and assess their own progress. Harlen (2007) stated that when students are motivated by goals, they “apply effort in acquiring new skills, seek to understand what is involved rather than just committing information to memory, persist in the face of difficulties, and generally try to increase their ability” (p. 67).
Feel free to download this handout to encourage teachers’ reflection on the learning objectives they created for their students.
Want to know more? Additional resources to consider:
References
An article on how to write learning objectives for virtual teaching.
Another short article on how to create learning outcomes for online teaching.
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