One of the most exciting things about having your own Learning Management System is the ability to create and distribute custom training content to your learners. Sure, Essential Learning provides the highest quality library of online courses available in our industry, but there are always courses that are unique to your environment. Instructional Design Technology has come a long way in the last few years and there is quite a bit of science to the art of creating quality online courses. Our Content design experts will help guide you on the path to creating your own content while giving you and your peers a place to share your own experiences and perhaps even your own content.
Welcome to my E-learning Blog!
In this blog we will talk about everything e-learning. Each week I will introduce one tip or trick to help you write outstanding e-learning course content that will make your course really pop!
Please feel free to comment on any of these blog posts and share your own ideas, tips, and tricks. This blog is for you - so please use it and make it work for you.
This week our first tip and trick is:
How NOT to Write Really BAD Learning Objectives!
Yes, we have all seen them... you know, those learning objectives that are so poorly written that you can't figure out what the heck the point of the course even is!
So let's talk about how to write GOOD learning objectives. Okay?
When writing learning objectives for your online course, you need to take the following steps:
STEP 1) Identify your goal for the course.
1. What do you want your audience to walk away with?
2. What do they need to know? What do they need to do?
STEP 2) Define your audience.
Who will be taking this course? What is the purpose of the course? Content should be meaningful and relevant for that audience, which means you may need to do an analysis of your learners. What is their education level, familiarity with this content, etc?
STEP 3) Make sure your learning objectives focus on student performance.
They should answer the question… what is it that your students should be able to do at the end of the course that they could not do before? When writing objectives – use action verbs that are specific and measurable.
Some examples of these action verbs include describe, implement, explain, compare and contract, list, report, analyze. They should state the behaviors students will be expected to perform.
Examples of poorly written learning objectives are:
1. Understand the importance of teamwork.
2. Demonstrate knowledge of how teams are formed.
How do you measure "understanding" or "demonstrating knowledge"?
I am attaching a list of action verbs you can use when writing learning objectives to this post.
Here is a question you might be thinking to yourself....
Why do we even need to include learning objectives?
When students can see how the material is related to their educational or professional goals, they can see the value of the course. The all important WIIFM (What's In It For Me!)
Objectives communicate what the instructor or course writer is trying to teach; what the students are to be expected to be able to do; how their achievement will be measured; and what will be accepted as evidence that they have achieved the goals.
You have a lot of latitude in how you write your objectives. You’re not stuck in any particular model. What’s critical is that the objective is performance-based and that who the learner is and what she needs to know prior to starting is clear.
Please feel free to add your comments below.
Thanks and happy blogging!
Michelle