Given that learning is the central purpose of teaching, student-centered objectives are the foundation of educational planning because of the following:

1. You use the objectives to plan the learning activities students will engage in to facilitate their learning.
2. The objectives tell you how the student should be assessed.
3. Students use objectives to plan how and what they will study.

Review
How do Outcomes/Competencies Become Objectives?


Writing Objectives
In order to be useful, objectives need to meet the following criteria:

Student Centered

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Timely

They must be STUDENT-CENTERED. The objectives must express what the student will be able to do once the instruction is concluded (Students will be able to identify symptoms of endocarditis.), not what the instructor will do or hopes to do (I will talk about endocarditis.), and not what the student will do to learn the material (Students will complete a case report on endocarditis.)

Objectives need to be plainly MEASURABLE in some written, oral, OSCE, or direct format. If they are not measurable, there will usually be widespread disagreement about whether the student has achieved the objective. That is why you never use the verb understand or know; they can never be measured because they can’t be directly observed. They are thinking processes, not actions and can only be judged based on assumptions about what is going on in the student’s head.

The learning expected of the student must also be ACHIEVABLE under the constraints of time and place. There are few things more frustrating and demotivating than an objective that student cannot possibly meet.

The objectives need also be RELEVANT; they must pertain to the course and the overall goals of the students and the program.

The objectives need to be TIMELY; in other words they need to fit with the flow of content for that semester. Pre-requisites should have been taught recently and classes attended later need to reinforce the material.


Answering the following questions will help you to write objectives:

• What do I expect the student to be able to do as a result of my instruction?
• How will the student demonstrate that he/she has learned?

Examples of medical objectives: (Notice the highlighted verb that states what the student will be able to do)

1. Upon completion of this unit, the student will be able to describe the mechanisms of action, the pharmacological effects, the therapeutic actions, and the adverse effects of lithium.
2. Provided with the necessary equipment, the student will be able to intubate a patient with minimum discomfort to the patient.

Resources

For more information about writing objectives, see http://www.medicine.usask.ca/cbf/JITR/Cycles/objectives or the TIPS manual.

For a great image of how online tools support different levels of objectives, see Visual Bloom's or Digital Bloom's Taxonomy.


To see a unique tool for linking objectives and content see the Differentiator.




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