The concept of Student Learning Objectives (SLO’s) has many benefits and challenges. Benefits include reinforcing best teaching practices, being adaptable as performance assessments, value educator skill and finally connecting teacher practices to student learning. From another lens, the challenges can be developing quality assessments throughout grade levels and subjects, creating appropriate growth targets for students and addressing school sanctioning of learning objectives (Lachlan-Hach, Cushing, & Bivona, 2012). I know in my experiences at my school learning objectives are not evaluated in the sense of quality and purpose, you get a check mark on an evaluation if something is written on the white board with SWBAT in front of it. (tongue in cheek)
With all of that said, I am in strong favor of creating learning objectives for you as the educator, it is an essential piece in the planning phase of unit plans and specific lesson planning. The state creates the standard in each subject area. This is a lengthy process that involves committees of educators, national associations in education and the state board of education (“Who Creates Learning Standards,” n.d.). Standards are often written with a broad pen to be interpreted or often misinterpreted. These standards are then measured at the state level with standardized assessments. It is the duty and responsibility of the classroom educator to decipher and “unpack” the standards into specific measurable units that students can apply to exhibit mastery of the standard. Not only in the planning phase is setting learning objectives of high importance. Often within the unpacking we determine the best way to assess student learning. We can tie those fancy levels of measurement in SLO’s to actionable verbs that fit along with Bloom’s Taxonomy. For instance, do they demonstrate knowledge by defining, describing or identifying? Not bad on some concepts that are taught within a curriculum. Do we push harder and look for application of knowledge by applying and demonstrating? What if we as educators demanded or expected evaluating that knowledge through creating, producing and justifying the learned concepts?
I’m not saying every lesson and every objective has to reach the highest orders of thinking, what I do believe is we must determine what we want the student to be able to accomplish at the end of a unit, lesson or course. What skill do they demonstrate to exhibit the knowledge they acquire and with what attitude they do it with (“Advancing Student Learning Outcomes,” 2017). Once we determine what actions students need to exhibit at the conclusion of a lesson, we can then determine methods of delivery of knowledge, what we are going to do in teacher centered phases and learner centered phases of a lesson. How we are going to check for understanding through formative assessments and finally how we are going to summatively measure students and collect appropriate data to know if we all hit the mark according to the standard? Learning objectives are also very beneficial for students as they communicate to students what they will need to do, cuts through the mystery of what’s important and acts as a guide for their learning (Zhou, 2018). This last measure is powerful for students as they can set course to prepare for the journey and keep them on target.
References:
Advancing student learning outcomes. (n.d.).
Higher Education Learning Outcomes Assessment. doi: 10.3726/978-3-653-04632-8/12
Lachlan-Hach ̌Lisa, Cushing, E., & Bivona, L. (2012). Student Learning Objectives: Benefits, Challenges, and Solutions. Place of publication not identified: Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse.
Who Creates Learning Standards? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/standards/who.html
Zhou, H. (2018, August 9). Why Does Writing Good Learning Objectives Matter? Retrieved from https://learninginnovation.duke.edu/blog/2017/03/learning-objectives/
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