"

Measurable Objectives and Instructional Alignment

Theresa Huff

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

  • Identify measurable objectives

Design is an intentional plan for a functional purpose. Plans, by design, are organized and have a particular structure. They exist in nearly every field, acting as structured guides for achieving specific goals. Here are some design plans from several fields:

  • Architecture and engineering: blueprints
  • Businesses: business plans
  • Medicine: treatment plans
  • Marketing: campaign plan
  • Manufacturing: production plan
  • Education: lesson plan

And in the field of instructional design, we use an instructional design plan. Your designed instruction is your plan for how the training, course, or program will function. It’s similar to a lesson plan in several ways, one of which is the structure. Lesson plans (which is what you are asked to create in your ORBs) and instructional design plans include the following foundational structures:

  • Measurable objectives
  • Aligned content
  • Aligned assessments

These three pieces form a sort of skeleton for designing your instruction or lesson.

Measurable Learning Objectives

Educators are taught a variety of ways to write learning objectives – some by their training, others by their institution. Learning to write objectives that are measurable is essential for instructional designers, because they literally form the guideposts and goal posts of our instruction. To get us started, here are two things learning objectives should include:

Learning objectives should state what the learner will be able to do by the end of the lesson or instruction.

Learning objectives describe what the learner will be able to do, not just what will be covered in the lesson. For instructional designers, this keeps instruction learner-centered, ensuring students develop skills or knowledge rather than just passively receiving information.

Learning objectives should be written from the student’s point of view.

For students, writing the objectives from their perspective makes it very clear what they are aiming for, and it keeps the focus on them. For instructional designers, it keeps us focused on the end goal rather than focusing on the content that will be covered.

It is easy to meet both of these standards by simply starting your learning objective with the phrase “By the end of this lesson, students will be able to….”

Example of writing from the student’s perspective with the end objective in mind

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to…

  • Identify the five persuasive strategies.
  • Adapt verbal messages to persuade specific audiences.

How To Make A Measurable Objective

We’ve seen how learning objectives should be phrased to center the learner and ensure the end goal is in view, but let’s see some practical application of making an objective measurable. Watch and interact with this video (hey, it’s an H5P Interactive Video!) by Instructional Technologist, Fan Yang, as she explains three aspects of a measurable objective and walks through several unmeasurable objectives and offers several ways to reframe them and ensure they are measurable.

To recap, a measurable objective:

  1. uses an observable verb.
  2. uses a specific object of the verb.
  3. includes a concrete context.

Examples of observable verbs and specific object and concrete context

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to…

  • Identify the five persuasive strategies to apply to their speeches.
  • Adapt verbal messages to persuade specific audiences.

Terminal and Enabling Objectives

You may have heard of terminal and enabling objectives in other courses in your program already. Essentially, the terminal objective is the one we already described – the one that states what the student will be able to do by the end of the lesson or instruction. It’s the final skill or knowledge students are expected to master. It’s also the one that is assessed at the end of the lesson. The enabling objectives are the smaller, scaffolded objectives that help the learner reach the terminal objective. Each one builds on the other, helping you prepare for that final task.

Using enabling objectives helps organize and structure your design of instruction. Bloom’s Taxonomy Verb Charts can offer lots of choices for scaffolded actions when creating enabling objectives. For guidance on using Bloom’s Taxonomy Verb Chart, select the arrow.

 

Bloom’s Taxonomy for Terminal and Enabling Objectives 

Blooms Taxonomy with verbs for objectives

Step 1: Find the action that your terminal learning objective calls for. In this example, the terminal objective’s action verb is “analyze”.

Step 2: Look at the levels before the one in which your terminal objective is located. Find actions that your learners are currently capable of. If they are new to this learning, start at the Remember level.

Step 3: Starting where your learner are currently choose one or more actions that you can turn into a terminal objective.

Step 4: Organize your actions to gradually lead learners toward the terminal objective.

 

 

Example of Terminal and Enabling objectives organized by Bloom’s Taxonomy

Terminal objective: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to analyze a food web by identifying the relationships between producers, consumers, and decomposers and explaining how changes in one population affect the entire ecosystem.

Enabling objectives (and their Bloom’s level): 

Remember level:

    • Students will be able to define producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
    • Students will be able to define  producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.

Understand level:

    • Students will be able to describe how energy flows through a food chain, moving from producers to consumers to decomposers.

Apply level:

    • Students will be able to construct a simple food chain showing the relationships between organisms.

Analyze level:

    • Students will be able to analyze how removing or adding a species affects an ecosystem’s food web.

Aligning Assessments and Content

This list of terminal and enabling objectives becomes the backbone of your instruction. Looking at the objectives above, you can see the steps that students will go through to reach the terminal objective (analyze) at the end. But there is more than that tucked into these objectives. When objectives are written this way, each objective already tells you:

  • What the summative assessment will be.
  • What the formative assessments will be.
  • What content you need to provide the learners.

Really? That’s all hidden in those objectives? Take a look:

Examples

Terminal objective: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to analyze a food web by identifying the relationships between producers, consumers, and decomposers and explaining how changes in one population affect the entire ecosystem.

  • The terminal objective already tells me what the student will do on the summative (final) assessment: analyze.
  • It also tells me what they will analyze for the assessment: a food web
  • And how they will go about analyzing it: by identifying the relationships between producers, consumers, and decomposers and explaining how changes in one population affect the entire ecosystem.

All that’s left for me to do is choose an assessment strategy.

Enabling objectives 

    • Students will be able to define producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
      • This tells me students will do for the first formative assessment (practice with feedback): define 
      • And what content I will need to cover beforehand: producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem

Now, all I need to do for this portion is come up with a strategy to allow them to practice their definitions and offer feedback, and determine the best way to deliver this content.

    • Students will be able to identify producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
      • This tells me what students will do for the first formative assessment (practice with feedback): identify
      • And what content I will need to cover beforehand: producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem

Now, all I need to do for this portion is come up with a strategy to allow them to practice identifying and offer feedback. It’s the same content as the previous enabling objective.

    • Students will be able to describe how energy flows through a food chain, moving from producers to consumers to decomposers.
      • This tells me what students will do for the first formative assessment (practice with feedback): describe
      • And what content I will need to cover beforehand: how energy flows through a food chain, moving from producers to consumers to decomposers

Now, all I need to do for this portion is come up with a strategy to allow them to practice describing and offer feedback, and determine the best way to deliver this content.

    • Students will be able to construct a simple food chain showing the relationships between organisms.
      • Same idea as above
    • Students will be able to analyze how removing or adding a species affects an ecosystem’s food web.
      • Same idea as above.
      • Once learners have been able to practice this step and been given feedback, they are ready for the summative (final) assessment, which we already discovered tucked in the terminal learning objective.

Practice finding the hidden pieces in each objective in this H5P interactive:

Summing Up

Hopefully, you’re beginning to see why so much time is devoted to writing measurable learning objectives as an instructional designer. It takes a little practice, but crafting measurable learning objectives will greatly clarify the flow, content, practices, and assessments of your instruction, saving you time and frustration.

To recap

Your learning objectives should:

  1. State what the learner will be able to do by the end of the lesson or instruction.
  2. Be written from the student’s point of view.
  3. Use an observable action verb.
  4. Use a specific object of the verb.
  5. Includes a concrete context.

In return, your learning objectives will:

  1. Help structure the flow of your instruction (terminal and enabling objectives).
  2. Tell you what action a student will need to practice (action verbs in enabling objectives).
  3. Tell you the content you need to provide to students before they practice (context in enabling objectives).
  4. Tell you on what action a student will be assessed (action verbs in terminal objectives).
  5. Tell you the context for the final assessment (context in terminal objectives.)

 

License and Attribution

“Measurable Objectives and Instructional Alignment” by Theresa Huff is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

 

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Design in Progress: A Collaborative Text on Learning Theories Copyright © by Theresa Huff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book