Why Instructional Objectives are so Important!

Ah, instructional objectives. I bet you were tempted not to read this article! My experience has been that they tend to evoke strong feelings in both faculty and students in a love-hate kind of way. Faculty do not enjoy writing them; students sometimes feel there are too many, and they don’t really understand how to use them to guide their study. But here is the thing. They are critically important to our ability to guide our students through the course and provide clear information about what they need to know and how they need to know it to achieve success. We can assess whether they met the course learning outcomes. Instructional objectives are the stepping stones to our learning outcomes. They are those measurable, focused, detailed statements using Bloom’s taxonomy and verbs that communicate what the students need to know, be able to do, or how to act or behave by the end of a segment (module, lecture) of learning. One way to determine if your instructional objectives are effective is by asking your students whether they know what they need to study and how for the exam.  If they can’t answer that question, there are two potential reasons. First, the quality of the instructional objectives is not written in a way that provides clear guidance. Second, and what I have found more common, is that the students were never taught why you wrote these objectives or how to use them. The first question we asked our students when they performed poorly on an exam was whether or not they used the instructional objectives to guide their study. The majority of the time, their response was no.  

In my discussion with students about the syllabus, I make it a point to review the importance of this document and, in particular, how to use the instructional objectives. I teach them why we write those objectives, their rationale, and about paying attention to the verb used in the objective. I also tell them that all the test questions are referenced to these objectives. So they already know what will be on the test (now they are really paying attention!). It won’t be on the test if it is not an objective. Knowing this guides students to where they need to focus their reading and studying efforts. If the student finds they are reading something that isn’t answering an objective, they don’t need to read it. That is not to say the information isn’t important; it is just that we must clearly define (learner-centered) what we expect of the students and what to know.

Let me give an example. Let’s use two instructional objectives for a multiple-choice, single-best-answer test.

1. By the end of this class, students will be able to recognize the components of a medical history.
2. By the end of the pulmonary module, given a patient scenario, students will be able to recommend and interpret common pulmonary laboratory blood test values to support a suspected diagnosis.

Using the examples above, I would ask the students how they would study for objective number one. Most say they would memorize the list – which is correct, given how the objective is written with the verb "recognize." Then, I ask them the same question about number 2. Typical answers are that they would study the blood tests and values and then make sure they knew which values indicate which diseases, and they would also make sure they understood the clinical presentations for those diagnoses. The difference between these two objectives and how they will study differently becomes pretty clear to them.  I usually do several examples with the class to ensure they know how to spot the verb and how using these objectives provides them with a content exam blueprint. 

It has been my experience that when faculty take the time to review the syllabus and teach students how to use it effectively to help them succeed in the course, students not only appreciate it more and tend to read it, but they also tend to feel better equipped for how and what to study. Also, once students understand instructional objectives, it helps keep us on our toes to ensure we write them correctly.

Two common questions I get related to course instructional objectives. 

First, do I have to teach or cover every objective in class, and 

second, do I need to have a test question for every objective? 

The operative word in both of these questions is every. The first question of whether you have to “teach” every objective, the answer is no. Many years back, I forgot to tell an ER doctor who was coming in to lecture that he did not have to teach each objective, especially since his particular topic had upwards of 50. You can imagine my surprise as I watched him fly through the material, noting what objective he was covering on each slide. Somehow, he managed to get through all the objectives, over 200 slides, in 3 hours! I learned later he had been practicing for days to make sure he made it through all the material in the given time. 

But there is a caveat here. You must inform your students in their syllabus (I would also remind them in person) that the course will not provide a lecture or class activity for every topic or concept they will be expected to learn. However, they are still responsible for learning that material.

Here is an example of what I put in my syllabi. Feel free to use or modify it.

Students are responsible for all course instructional objectives, whether or not they are covered through lectures or in-class activities. Exam questions will be based on material covered in class, required reading assignments, and other course-defined activities, sources, or documents provided. All exam questions will be based on the course instructional objectives. The use of other resources outside of those specified for the course are permitted; however, examination questions will be based solely on course-defined material.

It is our responsibility to make sure that we provide the students with the required reading and other course-defined materials for where we want them to go to learn the information in the objective.  A key point here is that you want them to use your defined resources. We know students use other sources to help them learn, but we need all students to go to the same source when it comes down to assessing them against the course learning outcomes and instructional objectives. Otherwise, our ability to evaluate them against what was taught and what we asked them to learn from the sources we provided falls apart.

Let’s take the second question about testing every objective. The instructional objectives for your course define the pathway to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes the students must learn by the end of a segment of learning, such as a module or even a single lecture. They communicate to the students what they need to learn and how they need to learn it. Therefore, when written correctly, course instructional objectives provide a blueprint for what can be included on an exam or performance assessment and serve to guide both the students in their studying and the faculty member in creating the assessment.

The course instructional objectives must be used to guide the content of the assessment. Each question or performance task (i.e., perform a skin exam) being assessed must be tethered to the objective it is evaluating. Ensuring the assessment matches the objectives helps us better determine whether the students learned what we asked them to learn. I use a numbering system for objectives. Next to each question, I note the objective(s) it covers. Doing this provides three key benefits. First, it makes sure every item on the assessment is from the objectives. Second, if a student is concerned about a question after the test – I can refer them back to the objective used for that question so they can review the material. Third, once the students genuinely know that you are writing examinations in this way, their trust goes up in the fairness of the exams, and the challenges about inappropriate or unrelated questions drop significantly.

An additional question that comes up is whether you can have more than one question for one objective. The answer is yes. This is especially true of higher learning objectives, such as when our objectives are asking students to be able to apply, synthesize, or assess.

For example, if your instructional objective reads: By the end of this module, students will be able to select and interpret the appropriate diagnostics studies for the types of pneumonia covered in this module. I think you could see how several questions could be generated from this one objective.

One of my goals around assessment is that I want the students to do well so they can demonstrate what they learned.  Since assessments tend to create anxiety and stress in students, I would remind them that every question is linked to one or more of the course instructional objectives when an exam is approaching. Therefore, their best approach to studying is using the objectives and ensuring they know all of what each one covered. I also shared with them that it was possible that not every objective would be on the exam and that I could create multiple questions from one objective. Over the years, I found that sharing this with students helped to reduce some of their anxiety about “what would be on the test” and also affirmed my commitment to them that they would be fairly evaluated on the material covered in the course and what they have been asked to learn.  I think we have all had the frightening and frustrating experience of taking an exam and feeling like it must have been for some other course than the one we were in!

At the end of the day, I believe our mission is to ensure that students are learning. When and how we assess them plays a crucial role in determining if they have achieved the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed. Being sure to inform the students about how they will be evaluated and provide them with an understanding of how best to use the resources we provide them so they can be successful is so vital to answering the question, “Did they learn what we needed them to learn?”