“Learning objectives…assist the teacher in designing instructional systems by guiding the selection and sequencing of subject matter content and the choice of instructional material and procedures. …enable a student to guide and manage his own learning. …serve as criteria for assessing student achievement and for evaluating the quality of instruction.” (Davis, et al., 1974)

Classification: Knowing Doing and Feeling Domains

Educational (learning) objectives are clearly written statements or descriptions documenting a teacher’s intent and expectations of the educational outcomes, including the expected level of performance to be achieved after a period of learning. Essentially, educational objectives convey in a meaningful way what the teacher expects students, after completing a course of study, to know, be able to do and be able to feel (i.e. to be able to display an appropriate response, in terms of attitudes and behaviour, in a given situation). In general, educational objectives are often classified within three learning domains (categories):

• Cognitive (knowing) domain: focusing on knowledge and information acquisition, retention and recall, and higher order thinking and intellectual skills and ability;

• Psychomotor (doing) domain: relating to skills that require various levels of well co-ordinated physical activity and manipulation, such as in speech making, the performing arts, operating machinery, surgical procedures; and

• Affective (feeling) domain: dealing with feelings, emotions, mindsets and values, including the nurturing of desirable attitudes for personal and for professional development.

Formulation Of Educational Objectives

Whether or not educational objectives in all three learning domains need to be formulated for a given course of study will depend upon the intended learning outcomes. For example, the educational objectives for a lecture will usually focus mainly on the cognitive domain. However, educational objectives in all three learning domains will be required in a medical or some other professional course in which it is also important to nurture the students’ communication and interpersonal skills for future professional practice. It is also not necessary to have equal proportions of educational objectives for every learning domain, as the distribution will be determined by the intended learning outcomes in each domain.

In addition, in formulating educational objections, it is best to use words or phrases (e.g. to identify, to differentiate, to evaluate, to perform a particular task or procedure, to elicit a response from) that describe, as precisely as possible, measurable or observable learning outcomes. Phrases like ‘to know’, ‘to understand’, and ‘to appreciate’, which are not precise enough for this purpose, may however be used in statements that describe the general goals of a course/programme. The educational objectives could also specify the performance level expected of the students under a given set of conditions.

For example, the intended outcomes of this article can be conveyed to readers in the form of educational objectives as shown in the figure below:

Although teachers and students can benefit from well-formulated educational objectives, there can be some limitations. Educational objectives can be difficult to formulate for the affective domain and are generally more useful in disciplines that have a high sequential content structure. Furthermore, it is not possible to identify all potential educational outcomes of learning at the beginning of a course, and specific educational objectives tend to make learning/education too mechanistic.

Enhancing Achievement Of Learning Outcomes

Educational objectives will enhance achievement of the intended learning outcomes as they provide useful guidelines for teachers to adopt a more systematic pedagogical approach in designing and planning instructional strategies, particularly with respect to:

• What to teach: Selecting content that will define the subject’s intended scope and depth;
  
• How to teach: Selecting appropriate instructional strategies for the chosen subject (e.g. lecture, small group tutorial, e-learning or practical laboratory experiments) that will best achieve the learning outcomes intended;
  
• How to assess: Designing appropriate assessment strategies (e.g. MCQs, essay questions or open book exams) to obtain consistent and reliable evidence on whether students have achieved the intended level of learning outcomes; and
  
• What to evaluate: Appraising the quality of instruction and quality of the course programme.

Conclusion

Educational objectives therefore define more clearly for students the intent and expectations of the teacher with respect to the learning outcomes to be achieved. Thus, educational objectives can serve as a means of effective communication between teachers and learners in the educational process. Educational objectives will therefore facilitate student learning and consequently, encourage and empower students to take greater initiative and responsibility to direct and to manage their own learning.