2. Learning Objectives & Backward Design
In a race, you start at the beginning and expend all your energy to reach the goal. Fortunately, teaching isn’t a race! When preparing to teach a course or create a lesson, the effective instructor begins at the finish line, analyzing what success will look like, and then works their way backward. As they travel the course backward, they identify and remove roadblocks, obstacles, and stray paths that could distract learners from reaching the objective.
In this lesson, we will identify the 5 stages of achieving alignment through backward design, identify ineffective learning objectives, and design assessable objectives that clearly mark the measure of success.
Video Instruction
Resources
- The Benefits of Backwards Design
- A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses (pdf)
- Idea Spark: Creating Instructional Objectives
- Integrating Technology with Blooms Taxonomy
- Bloom’s Taxonomy: A Crash Course For Online Course Creators
Try it
- Review your learning objectives. Are they measurable and at the right level of rigor?
- Contribute to the Learning Objective Makeover Board.
- Review your assessments. Are they construct relevant, aligning directly to an outcome?
Join the discussion
Contribute to The Learning Objective Makeover Board! Consider contributing in any of the following ways:
- Submit a learning objective for feedback
- Discuss the case study
- Answer another person’s question
Module 3 – Explore assessment options and establish your assessment strategy