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=Teaching staff are provided with support resources (including training, guidelines and examples) on developing learning objectives that address the full range of cognitive outcomes appropriate to the discipline, pedagogical approach and students.=

Evidence
Mager (1997) notes that without instructional objectives the following three problems arise: teachers can’t decide which content and procedures will help them to achieve their objectives, it is difficult to create assessments to tell whether students are competent or not, and students won’t know when to stop practicing.

However, it is not enough to merely require the clear statement of objectives in documentation templates because, ‘to order people to write objectives without ensuring they know how or why, is to invite dissension and frustration’ (Mager 1997, p. 151).

Resources
Florida State University uses different verbs (6 levels) which correspond to Blooom’s (1956) hierarchy of cognitive levels of learning objectives. It is also noted that learning objective domains can include cognitive, psychomotor and affective outcomes.

Milne & White (2005) collect together twenty-three sets of e-learning quality guidelines from an array of geographical regions. Such guidelines, or something like them, should be part of the support offered to staff by their organizations. Staff need guidelines, and examples of good practice.

Many web resources offer guidelines to writing good instructional objectives based on Mager’s (1984) and Bloom’s (1956) work, e.g.:

http://med.fsu.edu/education/FacultyDevelopment/PDF/writingobjectives.pdf

http://www2.gsu.edu/~mstmbs/CrsTools/Magerobj.html

http://classweb.gmu.edu/ndabbagh/Resources/IDKB/develop_objectives.htm

http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art3_4.htm