Design effective learning objectives.

Use the Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack to augment the Learning Objective Design Deck to plan effective learning outcomes for any educational context.  The Extension Pack adds additional verb cards to the design process to address the affective and psychomotor domain of the established Bloom’s Taxonomy and provides an interactive approach to curriculum design to ensure conceptual and procedural consistency.

The Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack is aimed at educators, instructional designers or anyone tasked with creating engaging learning experiences that also consider social and emotional as well as practical and physical characteristics in their learning design. The card deck can support the articulation of learning outcomes for any type of educational content, ranging from video tutorials, articles and books to workshops, projects and entire classes in school or university.

Learning Objective Design

With its modular design process, the Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack  works exactly the same as the Learning Objective Design Deck and provides a simple yet flexible template for constructing and writing learning objectives. Use it to create tangible output that is ready for immediate application. The cards are designed to easily ideate and articulate learning objectives. They are composed by combining operator and verb cards to address different dimensions in the affective and psychomotor domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Post-its can be used to customize and add context to your own learning design.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE COMPOSITION: THE AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

A design cycle with the Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack can be run individually or in teams as a design studio-like session. It makes the process of designing learning objectives creative, collaborative and even fun.

The Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack can be used together with the Learning Objective Design Deck and serves to extend the depth of the learning design towards emotional and social as well as practical and physical skills. Of course, the Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack can also used independently to exclusively address the different dimensions of the affective and psychomotor domain in the learning design. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVE COMPOSITION: THE PSYCHOMOTOR DOMAIN

HOW IT WORKS

STEP 1

Are you designing a workshop or lab, a series of lectures or an entire course? Define the level of granularity for the learning experience you are planning. Some easy-to-use operator cards will help you to structure the design process.

STEP 2A - AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

Define what your learners should be able to do after going through the learning experience you are designing. The affective verb cards – based on Bloom’s Taxonomy – will help you to address the appropriate affective dimension, the social and emotional skills your learners should practice.

STEP 2B - PSYCHOMOTOR DOMAIN

Define what your learners should be able to do after going through the learning experience you are designing. The psychomotor verb cards – based on Bloom’s Taxonomy – will help you to address the appropriate psychomotor dimension, the practical and physical skills your learners should practice.

THE THEORY BEHIND

The Learning Objective Design Card Deck Expansion Pack is a practical tool to make the process of defining Learning Objectives for any type of educational experience easier, creative, collaborative and even fun. The card deck extend to the Learning Objective Design Card Deck by explicitly addressing social and emotional as well as practical and physical skill in the learning design. The card and the method to use them is based on long and well established research in Pedagogy and Education Sciences. This is a brief overview of the theory behind the card deck, why and when it is useful to use  it as well as some tips on how to get the most out of it.  

Background

The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, published in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and collaborators, widely known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, is a framework to categorize and describe educational goals. The Taxonomy has been used by generations of teachers and instructors in their practice to better define the learning obectives of their educational interventions. 

cognitive domain

More recently, in 2001, the original Bloom’s Taxonomy was reviewed by a group of psychologists, instructional and curriculum researchers that published A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, also familiarly know as the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The revised taxonomy substituted the nouns of the original taxonomy with more dynamic verbs and gerunds to emphasize the dynamic nature of learning. These verbs address the different dimensions in the cognitive domain, the different types of thinking processes learners encounter and practice while acquiring new knowledge and skills. As such, the revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy provides an action oriented approach to learning objective design.

For an even deeper consideration of underlying principles developed as part of Bloom’s taxonomy, the affective and psychomotor domains of the taxonomy can be leveraged. They allow learning experiences to be modeled while also considering motor skills, such as physical movements, reflexes and coordination, and emotions, motivation and attitudes as well as social skills. Combined, the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains address the categories of thinking, feeling and doing. 

This approach is especially suited to active learning and problem-based approaches and other contemporary ways to structure learning experiences. Moreover the revised version, with its action-verbs and process oriented approach, allows educators to frame and define learning objectives with a learner-centred approach right from the initial steps of the learning design process.

When and Why it is used

Defining learning objectives before any educational experience is an established best practice. Bloom’s taxonomy is a powerful framework that can be used to construct, articulate and write the learning outcomes of a program, a course or a learning unit.

According to Vanderbilt University’ Center for Teaching, learning goals support both teachers and learners alike to understand the pedagogical interchange within the learning environment. Organizing such goals as structured sets of learning objectives provides clarification for both teachers and learners. They also help teachers to “plan and deliver appropriate instruction”, “design valid assessment tasks and strategies” and “ensure that instruction and assessment are aligned with the objectives”. 

The Expansion Pack

The Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack works the same way as the Learning Objective Design Deck and takes the elements of Bloom’s framework and turns them into a set of modules – the cards – that can be manipulated and composed in a natural and easy way. The modular and interactive nature of the deck makes the process of ideating, constructing and writing learning objectives less abstract and more tangible. 

The cards translate the taxonomy and its conceptual model into a practical tool and allow the framework to be used in a more dynamic and playful way.

The deck also adds a narrative-like compositional strategy to compose meaningful learning objective sentences and statements. Thanks to the operator cards – which provide bits of truncated sentences that need to be completed – the learning objectives can be designed in a learner-centred and actionable way.

The Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack can be used together with the Learning Objective Design Deck and serves to extend the depth of the learning design towards emotional and social as well as practical and physical skills. Of course, the Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack can also used independently to exclusively address the different dimensions of the affective and psychomotor domain in the learning design. 

Used in brainstorming-like sessions, the deck facilitates the design process and potentially unleashes out-of-the-box thinking, fostering discussion, creativity and collaboration when used in group settings. The Learning Objectives Design Deck Expansion Pack helps to produce fast tangible results that are ready to be used in the design of educational experiences, course outlines, curriculum and syllabus design, etc. 

THE CARDS

AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

The affective dimensions from Blooms’ taxonomy are represented in the deck with its five layers of receive, respond, value, organize and characterize.

PSYCHOMOTOR DOMAIN

The psychomotor dimensions fro Bloom’s taxonomy are represented in the deck its seven layer of perception, set, guided response, mechanism, complex overt response, adaptation and origination. 

VERBS

Each of the distinct dimensions of the affective and psychomotor domain from the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is represented through four verb cards. 

OPERATORS

Together with operator cards, the verb cards are used to write learning objectives that address social and emotional as well as practical and physical skills.

Learning Objective Composition

The operator cards are used with the verb cards to construct statements that constitute learning objectives in form of descriptive sentences. The cards guide the interactive process of articulating learning outcomes for any educational context. Results are ready for immediate usage, e.g. in tutorial descriptions, project requirements or curriculum outlines etc. The Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack supports the creation of consistent and coherent learning objectives through separation of structural integrity and learning content. This allows quick ideation with direct tangible output.  

LEARNING OBJECTIVE COMPOSITION: THE AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

LEARNING OBJECTIVE COMPOSITION: THE PSYCHOMOTOR DOMAIN

Credits

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy by: Anderson et al. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’sTaxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman.
Icons by: inward – By Adrien Coquet, FR ; outward – By Adrien Coquet, FR. All icons are licensed under a CC Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Learning Objective Design Deck Expansion Pack by imaginary institute is licensed under CC BY 4.0