Introduction

In many syllabi you’ll find a list of learning objectives or outcomes for a given course, just like the learning objectives for each chapter in this eBook are posted at the start. These represent goals that your instructor would like you to be able to meet by the end of the course. Often, as a student, you can use the provided learning objectives to direct your studying, focus on certain content areas, and identify what level of depth you should know certain topics at. This section will focus on how students can “decode” the learning objectives that are provided to them and use that information to direct their own learning.

What are the parts of a learning objective?

Learning objectives are written in three parts. The first part of a learning objective states who will be completing the objective and when they will meet the goal. Examples can be, “At the end of the class session students will be able to…”, “Upon completion of this course all participants will be able to…”, and “After completing this assignment learners will have…”. As you can see, learning objectives can be written for a given assignment, class period, or for the entire course. Often, instructors will write the first part of the learning objective at the top of a list that goes on to explicitly state the second and third components. You might also find that the first part of a learning objective is missing altogether. You can infer from the context the who and when of those learning objectives. For example, the learning objectives provided at the beginning of this chapter do not explicitly contain any information about who is completing the objective or when it should be completed. Despite this, we can infer that the first part of these learning objectives might read something like, “Upon reading this chapter and completing the associated activities learners will be able to…”.

The second part of a learning objective indicates how the learner should be able to complete the aim. This is often included as an action verb that can be measured by different types of assessments like true/false questions, multiple choice questions, assignments, papers, or projects. The action verbs that start each learning objective for this chapter (define, relate, and decode) indicate that learners are expected to provide a definition, describe a relationship between two entities, and apply what they’ve learned in practice. These goals are all at different levels of thinking that range from simple to complex. The second part of the learning objective often indicates the level and depth to which a student should be familiar with a given topic. We’ll explore this in more detail in the next section.

The third part of a learning objective indicates the what of the learning objective, meaning the specific course content being referred to is identified. This can help guide your studying by directing you to certain materials and/or subjects within the course.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

The second part of a learning objective can provide a big clue into what level your instructor would like you to know the associated course material. A widely used framework for categorizing levels of learning is referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy. This hierarchy of learning levels, developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl and was originally named Taxonomy of Educational Objectives^[1]. Bloom’s Taxonomy includes six levels of learning: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

As Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchy of learning levels, it is often depicted as a pyramid, like in the image above. The lower levels of the pyramid represent more basic tasks requiring a “surface level” understanding of material. As learners progress up the pyramid they are able to do more with the knowledge they’ve acquired in a certain subject area. In many of your courses you’ll see a mix of expectations for content. Ultimately, when you graduate you’ll be working almost exclusively at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy as you apply the theories and skills you’ve learned in school to your dental practice.

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Decode Learning Objectives

As previously mentioned, the second part of a learning objective indicates which level of learning an instructor is expecting from a student. As you read learning objectives, it can be useful to match the included action verb to a category of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This can help you know what level to understand the associated content, and how your instructor might assess your learning. Let’s take a look at this through some examples:

In example learning objective 1 the action verb is “list“. This asks students to recall facts that were presented in course content and can be associated with the “remember” category of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It’s fair to assume that this learning objective requires a lower level understanding of the associated course content. The action verb associated with the second example learning objective is “design“. This indicates that the instructor expects the student to produce a new document using course material and can be associated with the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy: create. Example learning objective 3 is written for an intermediate level of Bloom’s Taxonomy – analyze. The task “compare and contrast” indicates that the learner should be able to describe similarities and differences between two topics.

Using Learning Objectives to Direct Your Studying

Using learning objectives to generate study guides or outlines for papers and projects can be a very effective way to organize your thoughts and focus your learning efforts. You might consider generating a study guide that is organized by content area. Within each content area you could add specific topics by level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. You might find that certain learning objectives correlate to multiple topics in your study guide, especially those written at higher levels of learning. These connections between content areas can also drive the organization of your study guide, and provide insight on how the different modules or topics within a course relate to each other. We’ll delve more into effective study tips and how to connect ideas and concepts for higher learning in the coming chapters.