It’s the moment when you bring together knowledge of the audience and the purpose of the course – when you ask: what exactly do our learners need to know and be able to do, and why?

If your aims and objectives are done well, they form a solid foundation upon which everything else can be built. Outcomes and objectives that are badly written, or not targeted enough, will invariably lead to wasted time and money, as elements of the course must be reworked later on in the project lifecycle.

It’s crucial to get input and sign off from the client on your outcomes and objectives before you proceed with the project; this will help ensure that they know what they’re getting, and that you know what you’re creating. The process of design and delivery will also run much more smoothly.

Generally, the best time to do this is during the first content focused meeting with the client subject matter experts – ideally just before you go through the content in detail.

Keep in mind that outcomes are general statements about what the learners need to get from the course, such as:

• Improve sales skills
• Increase knowledge of information security and GDPR
• Learn how to use SEO in web content

…whereas learning objectives are much more targeted and specific. You’ve probably heard of SMART objectives; they are:

• Specific
• Measureable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time Orientated

The SMART approach, properly applied, is an excellent way to ensure high quality, targeted objectives. So, how can this be applied specifically to an e-learning context?

Specific

Learning objectives must be specific enough that it’s clear exactly what learners must know and/or be able to do once they have completed the learning.

Benjamin Bloom, in his indispensable taxonomy of learning objectives, states that objectives can be broadly grouped into remembering, understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and creation. These are then formed into a hierarchy, with knowledge at the bottom, and creation, or synthesis, at the top.

Anderson and Krathwohl, developing on Bloom’s ideas, created lists of verbs corresponding to each level of the hierarchy, to help ensure that learning objectives are specific enough. Learners may thus be asked to:

• List the different types of questions used in effective sales
• Discuss with a forum the four biggest challenges presented by GDPR
• Compose a list of keywords to use for SEO on a business blog

Measureable

Making sure that objectives are specific goes a long way to working out how to measure them.

Additionally, the e-learning sector has long had the ability to measure and track completion of learning resources, through the use of LMSs. We can, for example, include formative and summative assessment content to test learners knowledge, tracking completion scores and tailoring future learning experiences to the learner’s proven level of understanding.

Measuring attainment has become more complex with the increasing prominence of blended solutions and more varied learning content. However, in tandem with this, the range of measurement solutions available to us are also becoming more refined.

Achievable

When thinking about whether a learning objective is achievable, you should make sure you know and understand your learning audience, and in particular their level of expertise. It’s a question of correct pitching.

There’s no point, for instance, asking new starters to perform complex evaluative and creative tasks if they don’t yet have the knowledge or understanding of your processes, or the experience to apply them correctly.

Similarly, you should not pitch too low for the audience. If you try and teach top level experts basic skills and knowledge, you risk a demotivated and probably hostile audience.

If you’ve got the difficulty level right, it should be just beyond what the majority of the learner group currently know or are able to do. If you have learners of different levels within your audience, consider role filtering or a test teach approach, in which content is tailored based on an upfront test of the learner’s existing knowledge.

Relevant

‘Why’ is very important in maintaining learner motivation. Ask yourself:

• Why should my learners care about this course?
• Why is the learning important to their role? How will it help?
• What are the positive consequences for them if they engage?
• What are they negative consequences if they don’t?

 

Once you’ve got the answers to these questions, tackle them upfront, within the e-learning content. You might include an introductory animation explaining the benefits, or intersperse a series of expert interviews throughout. Scenario based learning can also be highly effective.

Time oriented

When do you need your learners to have completed the learning by?

Sometimes, timing is critical. For example, at the time of writing, the recent information security related Global Data Protection Regulation is a hot topic, as it will have a huge, and far reaching, impact on businesses around the world, and will become enforceable in May 2018.

This, again, would be best tackled up front in the learning, at the same time as the value proposition outlined above.

Conclusion

Creating effective learning outcomes and objectives is critical in the early stages of a project, to ensure that what you create is targeted, relevant, and in line with client expectations. The SMART approach can be an excellent way to focus your development of effective learning objectives.

What are your views on outcomes and objectives? Have you worked on projects with inspiring or unusual learning objectives? How about experiences of where things went wrong? Let me know your thoughts!