Estimated reading time: 30 minutes.
make_videos.py or record and embed your own.)A learning objective states what the learner will be able to do after instruction, under what conditions, and to what standard. It is written for three audiences at once. It tells the designer what to teach and assess. It tells the learner what success looks like. And it tells the evaluator what to measure. An objective that cannot serve all three is not finished.
Objectives are derived directly from the task analysis: each numbered element above the entry-skill line becomes one or more objectives. That derivation is what keeps instruction tied to performance.
Robert Mager (1962) specified that a useful objective contains:
Example: Given a patient wristband, a medication order in the EHR, and a handheld scanner (conditions), the nurse will verify patient identity and medication match (performance) with 100% accuracy across ten simulated administrations, including two with mismatch alerts (criterion).
Heinich and colleagues' ABCD format adds the audience explicitly: Audience, Behavior, Condition, Degree. It is the same information reorganized; many organizations prefer it because it forces the writer to name who the objective is for. Use whichever your context expects, but include all components.
The verb is the objective. "Understand," "know," "appreciate," and "be familiar with" describe internal states nobody can observe. Replace them with what the learner would do to show the state: list, describe, classify, compare, calculate, demonstrate, perform, diagnose, design, justify.
Bloom's revised taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001) organizes cognitive verbs by complexity:
| Level | What the learner does | Sample verbs |
|---|---|---|
| Remember | Retrieve facts | list, name, recall, identify |
| Understand | Construct meaning | describe, explain, summarize, classify, compare |
| Apply | Use a procedure | perform, execute, calculate, demonstrate, use |
| Analyze | Break into parts and relate them | differentiate, organize, diagnose, distinguish |
| Evaluate | Judge against criteria | critique, justify, appraise, recommend |
| Create | Put elements together into something new | design, compose, plan, produce |
The taxonomy is a vocabulary, not a hierarchy to climb in every lesson. Match the level to the task analysis. If the job requires applying a procedure, an "apply" objective is correct; adding "create" objectives to look rigorous misaligns the instruction.
For Gagné's other domains use verbs suited to them: for motor skills, perform, execute, assemble; for attitudes, choose, volunteer, comply with; for verbal information, state, list, describe.
The terminal objective describes the goal performance; there is usually one per unit of instruction. Enabling objectives describe the subordinate skills that build to it. The hierarchy from your task analysis gives you the structure for free. Learners see the terminal objective and the main enabling objectives; the designer works with all of them.
| Flawed objective | Flaw | Fixed objective |
|---|---|---|
| Students will understand the ADDIE model | Unobservable verb; no conditions or criterion | Given a description of an ID project, students will identify which ADDIE phase each described activity belongs to, with at least 9 of 10 correct |
| Learners will be familiar with the EHR | Unobservable; topic rather than performance | Using the practice environment, learners will locate a named patient and open the medication administration record within 60 seconds |
| Participants will learn about accessibility | Verb describes the instruction, not the learner | Given a short e-learning module, participants will identify all WCAG violations from a list of eight common types |
| Nurses will administer medications | Missing conditions and criterion; too broad | (Split into the terminal objective and enabling objectives from the task analysis) |
| Students will write a good essay | "Good" is not a criterion | Students will write a 500-word persuasive essay that meets all four criteria on the attached rubric at the proficient level or above |
Well-written objectives make relevance visible (Keller's R in ARCS) and give learners a standard to aim at, which supports confidence (C). Share the terminal objective and the assessment criteria with learners at the start of instruction. Hiding the standard helps nobody.
Write three objectives from your task analysis: the terminal objective and two enabling objectives. Post them in the clinic for peer critique before you use them in the instructional plan.
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.
Heinich, R., Molenda, M., Russell, J. D., & Smaldino, S. E. (2002). Instructional media and technologies for learning (7th ed.). Merrill.
Mager, R. F. (1997). Preparing instructional objectives (3rd ed.). Center for Effective Performance.