Planning a Course: Defining Instructional Objectives

Adapted with permission from the Center for Teaching, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

The first step in creating a high-quality course is to clearly define your educational goals and objectives. Educational goals are broad, overarching themes that will guide your course. Objectives are concise, explicit statements that describe what exactly you expect students to learn and the skills you hope they will acquire during your course.
 
Establishing clear and detailed statements about your teaching goals and objectives can help you select appropriate teaching techniques, create learning activities, and choose evaluation and assessment methods. Even if you are not developing the course yourself or are a teaching assistant, it is still important for you to consider your goals in teaching your students and how you will reach those goals. Once you meet with students, it is important to take into consideration their personal goals for the course and their prior knowledge as well. (Information about getting feedback from students can be found later in Part One, under "Addressing Students' Needs").

Writing your educational goals first will guide you in creating learning objectives. The goals of your course are determined largely by your subject matter, the level of difficulty of your course, and your personal interests. Decide what your goals are for your students. At what level do you expect students to learn and perform? What skills do you want students to take away from your course?

Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy may be used to match course activities to desired learning outcomes. Bloom's taxonomy identifies three major categories of learning: cognitive, affective and psychomotor. Each category is listed on the following page, along with different levels of comprehension. Each level is increasingly more difficult and complex. Key terms that exemplify the level of understanding are also given.

Cognitive: development of intellectual skills, knowledge.

1. Recall
 

define, describe, identify, know, label, list, match, name, outline, recognize, reproduce, select, state

2. Comprehension
 

convert, defend, distinguish, estimate, explain, extend, generalize, give examples, infer, interpret, paraphrase, predict, rewrite, summarize, translate

3. Application
 

apply, change, compute, construct, demonstrate, discover, manipulate, modify, predict, relate, show, solve, use

4. Analysis
 

break down, compare, contrast, diagram, deconstruct, differentiate, identify, illustrate, infer, relate

5. Synthesis
 

categorize, combine, compose, create, devise, design, explain, generate, organize, rearrange, revise, summarize, write

6. Evaluation
 

appraise, compare, conclude, criticize, critique, defend, describe, discriminate, evaluate, explain, interpret, justify, relate, support

Affective: feelings, emotions, values or attitude.

1. Receiving or attention
 

asks, chooses, describes, selects, replies

2. Responding
 

answers, assists, discusses, performs, practices, presents, reads, tells

3. Valuing
 

demonstrates, explains, follows, initiates, invites, justifies, proposes, reports, shares

4. Organization
 

break down, compare, contrast, diagram, deconstruct, differentiate, identify, illustrate, infer, relate

5. Internalizing values
 

acts, discriminates, influences, listens, modifies, performs, qualifies, questions, revises, serves, solves, verifies

Psychomotor: manual or physical skills.

1. Perception
 

choose, describe, detect, differentiate, distinguish, identify, isolate, select

2. Readiness to act
 

begins, explains, moves, proceeds, reacts, shows, volunteer

3. Guided response
 

copy, trace, follow, react, reproduce

4. Mechanism
 

assemble, construct, dismantle, fix, manipulate, measure, mix, organize, sketch

5. Adaptation
 

alter, change, rearrange, reorganize, revises, vary

6. Origination
 

arrange, build, combine, compose, construct, create, initiate, make
(Bloom, 1956)

Use these levels of comprehension and descriptive verbs to help guide you in writing course objectives. For example, if you are teaching an entry-level course, you may not emphasize more advanced cognitive skills such as synthesis or evaluation. If one of your goals is to teach students how to perform chemistry experiments, break this general aim down into its component parts for your objectives:

• to formulate a hypothesis,
• to design an experiment,
   
• to collect data,
   
• to analyze it,
   
• to draw conclusions, etc.

Then, break each of these into its component skills. The following is an example of course objectives and goals from an Inorganic Chemistry course:
Course Objectives: Inorganic Chemistry

This course will provide an audience of junior and senior students majoring in chemistry or the allied chemical sciences with a foundation in the theoretical principles and descriptive chemistry of the elements. The objective is to introduce the concepts of symmetry and their application to molecular orbital theory, and to use this theoretical framework to understand the chemistry of the elements, with a focus on the transition elements.

By the end of the course it is expected that every student will:

• Be able to determine the point-group symmetry of a molecule and use the point-group symmetry to deduce select spectroscopic properties.
   
• Be able to derive a molecular orbital diagram for a molecule in an ideal geometry and use the diagram to aid in prediction of chemical behavior.
   
• Have a basic knowledge of the descriptive chemistry of the element families and be familiar with literature sources that can provide further information.
   
• Be able to predict the chemical behavior of significant classes of inorganic molecules, including transition metal coordination compounds and organometallic compounds.
   
• Be able to propose several plausible reaction mechanisms for a given chemical transformation, derive rate laws for these mechanisms, and interpret experimental kinetic data to provide support for or evidence against a given mechanism.
   
• Be able to access the chemical literature to find specific chemical information.

Use these levels of comprehension and descriptive verbs to help guide you in writing course objectives. For example, if you are teaching an entry-level course, you may not emphasize more advanced cognitive skills such as synthesis or evaluation. If one of your goals is to teach students how to perform chemistry experiments, break this general aim down into its component parts for your objectives:

1. to formulate a hypothesis,
    
2. to design an experiment,
    
3. to collect data,
    
4. to analyze it,
    
5. to draw conclusions, etc.

Then, break each of these into its component skills. The following is an example of course objectives and goals from an Inorganic Chemistry course:
Course Objectives: Inorganic Chemistry

This course will provide an audience of junior and senior students majoring in chemistry or the allied chemical sciences with a foundation in the theoretical principles and descriptive chemistry of the elements. The objective is to introduce the concepts of symmetry and their application to molecular orbital theory, and to use this theoretical framework to understand the chemistry of the elements, with a focus on the transition elements.

By the end of the course it is expected that every student will:

1. Be able to determine the point-group symmetry of a molecule and use the point-group symmetry to deduce select spectroscopic properties.
    
2. Be able to derive a molecular orbital diagram for a molecule in an ideal geometry and use the diagram to aid in prediction of chemical behavior.
    
3. Have a basic knowledge of the descriptive chemistry of the element families and be familiar with literature sources that can provide further information.
    
4. Be able to predict the chemical behavior of significant classes of inorganic molecules, including transition metal coordination compounds and organometallic compounds.
    
5. Be able to propose several plausible reaction mechanisms for a given chemical transformation, derive rate laws for these mechanisms, and interpret experimental kinetic data to provide support for or evidence against a given mechanism.
    
6. Be able to access the chemical literature to find specific chemical information