Teachers always want to get through to their students in the best way possible, and often go out of their way to provide interesting content and various learning materials. But sometimes, in the middle of all the planning, educators find themselves struggling to set a direction for their course, which makes it difficult to know whether or not their students are progressing.
One of the best ways to give a direction and some achievable targets to your teaching is to determine and convey learning objectives. When you have a clear focus on where you’re going, both you and your learners can easily get there.
When creating a class on oktopi.ai, you have the option to add learning objectives to your lesson materials. But are learning objectives really worth investing your time into? Let’s talk about them and let you decide!
What is a learning objective?
A learning objective is a direct, clear, and brief outcome statement made by the teacher to define specifically what knowledge, skills, attitudes learners should be able to exhibit once they’ve achieved the course.
How do they benefit students?
Learning objectives provide students with a clear purpose on which to focus their learning efforts. When learning objectives are explicitly articulated to learners, they can know what is expected of them precisely. They can then use the objectives to guide and direct their study methods, focus on certain content, and make sure they’re able to reach the objective through specific activities and exercises.
This will give students a more active role in learning and allow them to self-evaluate along the way and at the end of the course, and understand the reason they didn’t achieve a particular objective, and be able to focus on it again.
How do they benefit teachers?
Adding learning objectives to a course helps teachers plan course lessons and modules. Setting learning objectives first and working backward enables teachers to identify the kinds of materials and topics that will be most suitable to intended learning outcomes. Teachers can then design their curriculum by selecting and organizing course content.
Learning objectives also facilitate assessment by helping teachers define their testing and assessment strategies, and can form the basis for grading or determining levels of student achievement.
How to write learning objectives
The key to writing effective learning objectives is to make them SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely), and to make sure they include these three elements:
- What students should achieve- what are the added skills or knowledge that students will have by the end of the course?
- How will students demonstrate their learning- what are the actions, exercises, and/or activities that students should be doing to achieve this goal
- Determining if a student has met their objective- What are the specific criteria that will indicate how well a student has grasped the skill or concept?
Here are some well-written examples of learning objectives to get inspired.
Learning objectives can seem tricky, but if done well, they are the key to a strong lesson plan. When adding your lessons on oktopi.ai, we strongly suggest you link your lesson materials to learning objectives to give your students a clear vision of your class and targets, and be able to track their progress with our Analytics Features. A clear and directed course will make your and your students’ educational journey all the more enjoyable!
