One of the frameworks we often use for crafting learning objectives is Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Bloom’s taxonomy is a hierarchy with six levels that are used to categorize educational goals. Each level has different groups of verbs that are associated with the level of knowledge or skill students should have acquired. 

The lower levels of the hierarchy (remember, understand) are low level, usually involving simple recall or restatement of content. While these are appropriate in most courses, we also want students to go beyond remembering and understanding to higher order thinking skills, such as apply, analyze, evaluate, create. These higher order thinking skills are often the main focus of upper division and graduate courses, but can be implemented across the curriculum from general, introductory courses to graduate seminars.

Well-crafted objectives are concrete, specific, measurable/observable, achievable, and relevant. Instead of thinking about what the course will do, think what students should be able to do, having taken the course. Try to avoid using passive verbs such as “know,” “appreciate,” or “understand”  because these can be too subjective and difficult to measure. Good learning objectives focus on what we want students to be able to learn or to do by the end of our course, and we need to choose what evidence (behavior/performance/artifact) best demonstrates that learning.

For assistance in creating objectives, you can use our homegrown digital tool. Select the best verbs by grabbing the red portion with your mouse pointer and dragging it clockwise. The medium blue in each wedge includes the appropriate verbs, and the lighter blue outside includes related teaching methods. The notes in the left-hand, gray column will change with each new section you uncover; they elaborate and give some examples from various disciplines.

If you have difficulty crafting your learning outcomes, it often helps to work backwards. That is, think about student assessments first. What are you actually measuring? Whatever the graded items measure, that is what you want students to know and be able to do with their knowledge.

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Mcdaniel, R. (2020, March 25). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Retrieved January 19, 2021, from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/