State of the Art Professional Development: Are Your Learning Objectives on Track?

By Tracy Wright, MAED | February 23, 2016
Project Director, ETR

Writing clear, measurable, achievable objectives that guide your training design is a critical part of good professional development. I call these healthy objectives. But creating them can be a bit tricky. In fact, in our Training of Trainer programs, we often find that writing healthy objectives is one of the skill areas where participants most need support.

 

Fortunately, there’s a wealth of information out there. Anyone with an Internet connection can discover exactly what objectives are, how to write them and how to share them with learners.

 

And, unfortunately, there’s a plethora of information out there. Anyone with an Internet connection can find dozens of different opinions about what objectives are, how to write them and how to share them with learners.

 

In other words, it’s difficult to find clear consensus on the what, why and how of learning objectives.

Plenty of Expert Opinion

The Handbook of the Association of Talent Development defines the term “objective” as “a target or purpose that, when combined with other objectives leads to a goal.” (And that makes it perfectly clear, doesn’t it!)

There are a lot of different terms used in conjunction with the term “objective” and they have different nuanced meanings for different audiences. For example, you may hear the terms performance objectives, learning objectives, instructional objectives, instructional-design objectives, terminal objectives, and focusing objectives, just to name a few.

Some experts question the value of objectives and whether written objectives need to be shared with learners. Others wouldn’t even begin to plan learning opportunities without first developing objectives that describe the expected change in learners’ knowledge, skills and/or attitudes. There’s also debate among training and development professionals about how objectives should be written and just what constitutes an effective objective. For example, see these informative posts by Cathy Moore and Cammy Bean.

This is all hugely exciting information—if you’re into that sort of thing. But let’s face it. Most of us are not. So my goal in writing this post is to offer some ideas that will make the development of your objectives easier, and help you use them as a guide to planning and designing your learning opportunity or process.

Write Your Objectives Well

The guidance in this post is specifically for writing what I call learning objectives. I’m assuming here that it’s already been determined that training is the right solution to fill a gap or solve a problem.

My definition for “learning objectives” is those statements that specifically describe what learners should be able to know, do and/or feel after completing the learning opportunity. These objectives should be tied to learners’ successful implementation of the new knowledge and or skill targeted by the learning opportunity once they’re back on the job.

I’m one of the people who believes that any time you’re designing a learning opportunity, you should begin with the end in mind—the desired learner outcomes. Only then are you ready to work to create specific, measurable and achievable learning objectives that, when completed, will get learners to that end.

As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”

Quick Check: Three Essential Questions for Healthy Objectives

These three questions will help you write learning objectives that work. They will guide your design. They will be measurable. They will be achievable.

Quick Check 1: Do the objectives express your intended outcomes?

Remember, healthy objectives state what the learner will know, feel and/or be able to do as a result of a learning process. They describe the expected change in knowledge, attitude or skill—and should reflect something the learner will actually have to do back on the job.

Sometimes objectives are confused with activities. Activities are processes used during a learning opportunity to facilitate learner achievement of the objectives. Often, more than one activity is needed to achieve an objective.

Quick Check 2: Are your objectives measurable and observable?

Healthy objectives allow you to clearly articulate how you will know if learners acquire the knowledge, skills and/or attitudes needed to achieve the intended outcomes. As part of your preparation, you’ll develop an assessment plan to measure the success of the learning opportunity. Each objective will link directly to your assessment plan.

For example: To assess achievement of the objective from Quick Check #1 above (“Revise their site’s sexual health education policies to meet effective practices”), you might do one or more of the following:

• Create a post-training survey. Have participants complete it at the end of the event. Include an item that assesses participants’ confidence in their ability to assess and revise their sexual health education policies to align with effective practices.
• Have participants complete action plans. These outline steps they will take when they return to their work settings. The plan should specifically include an item addressing steps for assessing and revising sexual health education policies. Make copies of these action plans that you can use during follow-up support with participants.
• Create a follow-up survey. Complete this with participants at some point in time after the learning event ends (e.g., a week, three weeks, two months). Include an item that assesses whether participants actually did assess and revise their sexual health education policies to align with effective practices.

Quick Check  3: Is it feasible for your objectives to be achieved within this learning process?

We trainers are a dedicated and enthusiastic tribe. We want to give the best possible support to participants in our learning events. A common flaw that results from this admirable zeal is that we often try to cover too much territory in too little time. A key indicator for this is the development of objectives that are, quite simply, too grand for the time and resources we are given.

Look at your objective(s). Then consider the timeframe, trainer/facilitator resources, foundation knowledge of participants and format of your learning opportunity. If your objective(s) seem unrealistic in this context, revise them to make them feasible.

For example: If your training event is one hour long, there will not be adequate time for participants to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively assess and revise their own sexual health education policies. However, one hour may be enough time to build knowledge and skills to assess policies for inclusion of effective practices.

In this case, revise your objective to: “Upon completion of this learning opportunity, participants will be able to assess their site’s sexual health education policies for inclusion of effective practices.”

In other words, be realistic! It is a common error, and one that is not in the best interest of the learner, to try to squeeze too much in too little time.

Coming Up: Sharing Objectives with Learners

So now you have measurable learning objectives that reflect your end outcomes and that you can use to guide your design. What’s an effective way to share these with your learners? We’ll tackle the answer to that question in an upcoming post!

Tracy Wright, MAED, is a Project Director at ETR. She is a skilled distance learning, eLearning and professional development specialist. She has also served as a health education teacher in both middle and high schools. She can be reached at tracy.wright@etr.org.