Creating concise objectives is key to developing purposeful and systematic instruction. One of the most prevalent conclusions that educators have drawn from the large body of instructional research is that instruction needs to be tailored to support concrete instructional objectives and to meet specific learning outcomes (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1974; Bloom, Krathwohl, & Masia, 1956).
The <Replace - Institution Name> is a member of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). The SACS Criteria for Accreditation requires that all institutions must develop a set of learning goals for each program that is consistent with the mission of the school or program (SACS, 2001). To meet the SACS requirement, it is important to link your course goals and objectives to the university, school, and program goals. In an online environment, clear and measurable course goals and objectives are especially important for creating a purposeful learning environment.
Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives is a framework for classifying different ways of thinking about and ordering objectives. According to Bloom (1956), learning occurs in three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Within the cognitive domain, Bloom categorizes and orders thinking skills and objectives from lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills in six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The framework has since been adapted for classroom use as a means to support purposeful development of instructional content and specifically measurable learning objectives.
Two major revisions on Bloom’s taxonomy took place in the recent decade. Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) first revised Bloom's taxonomy to meet the needs of 21st century audiences. The revised taxonomy included the use of verbs in categories of thinking skills and rearrangement of the sequence within the taxonomy. Clark (2007) later adapted this revision in a circular graphic called Bloom's Taxonomy Adapted Model. Refer to this adapted model to help write your learning objectives and select appropriate assessment items for your own course(s).
In 2007, Church extended Bloom's taxonomy even further to fit the needs of the new social media technology. In the digital taxonomy, Church integrated the use of blogs, wikis, and other social media tools together with traditional means to demonstrate the six categories of thinking skills. For more information, please refer to the materials below in the Further Reading section.
A number of instructional strategies and best practices that are relevant to developing learning objectives have been included in the following section. For a blended course example, visit Blended Learning Toolkit. Read the strategies and discuss with your instructional designers how you can use them in your design process.
Visit Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository to view faculty examples related to measurable learning objectives.
TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.