How to Write Learning Objectives
Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Determine Wording for Educational Outcomes
Jun 23, 2009
Lessons, units and courses all need specific educational outcomes for learners. These outcomes, or learning objectives, are what they are expected to know, do or understand. Applying Bloom's Taxonomy to the desired outcomes can produce objectives through which educators and students can identify what will be learned, how it will be learned and how to determine it was learned.
Writing Effective Learning Objectives
Start with any documentation already available for the lesson, unit or course, such as a description or core competencies, or consider the desired outcomes. Then, analyze the information for four things; audience, behavior, condition and degree.
- Audience: to whom is the objective applied, “The student will ”
- Behavior: what is the observable result, “describe in writing,” or “maintain composure ”
- Condition: any specific situation during which the objective must be met, “during controversial debate”
- Degree: how well the student must do to be considered proficient, “five of the six test trials”
A learning objective is created when the four parts are put together. One example would be, the student will maintain composure during controversial debate for at least five of the six debates held in class. Another is, students will be able to relate eight basic human needs to what is provided by Earth and explain them in a report describing what would be required to support life on a space ship. Notice that the first objective is written in the order of audience, behavior, condition and degree, but the second one rearranges the parts as audience, degree, behavior and condition.
Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Choose Words for Objectives
Bloom's Taxonomy is applied to writing learning objectives when choosing the verb. Each of the three domains, Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor, relate to the three primary learning outcomes, knowledge, attitude and skills. The domains are also split into levels ranging from basic to highest order. The verb chosen for the learning objective can be changed according to these domains and levels in order to vary the difficulty or entirely change the degree of the outcome.
In the example about students maintaining composure in a debate, the ability to maintain composure is from the Affective domain's highest level, internalizing values. Changing the wording, and verb, so that the learning objective refers to students being able to propose a controversial concept instead of debating it changes the level to Valuing.
In the example about life on a space ship students are expected to explain. Explain shows comprehension in the Cognitive domain, which is one of the more basic levels, but because of the added condition of applying this to describing what would be required to support life on a space ship the level is moved to the Synthesis level. Removing that additional part of the condition would make the learning objective more basic.
Though it can be broken down into simple parts, writing learning objectives requires much thought and consideration. Once the desired outcomes are known the objectives can be written by considering the audience, behaviors, conditions and degrees. Applying Bloom's Taxonomy and changing the verb, and sometimes some of the wording supporting that verb, allows the objective to be varied according to the needs of the learners.
 |
