teaching-journal

Goals, Objectives, and Learning Outcomes

by Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at OU

• Seems like a traditional behavourism-based summary of how to build a sylabus

• Goals: Larger aims of the course.
• Objectives: A map of the actions the instructor takes to achieve the Goals.
• Outcomes: What the learners actually produce as a result of the instruction Objectives.
  • Used to assess the student’s learning so Outcomes must be measurable and observable.

• Goals, Objectives and Outcomes become progressively more concrete.

• Wording matters
• Outcomes should describe the students will be able to do using:
  • Action verbs
  • the Content involved
  • the Context in which they will be using the Content
• These translate to the following in a learning outcome
  1. Action Word (performance)
  2. Learning Statement (the learning content)
  3. Criterion (condition)
• Bad action verbs: Learn, Know, Understand

• Visualizing the action words should lead you to the action verbs that will produce a measurable, observable learning outcome.

• Bloom’s Hierarchy of learning organizes action verbs by the level of learning (beginner -> expert)