Yeah it’s been a while since a post on eLearning, but in my defense its better late than never. Well, in this post we will discuss about Learning Objectives (LO).
Let’s start by first understanding the basics, i.e., what is an LO? An LO is a statement that directs the learner to understand what he/she will learn [addition or development of new skills] after the completion of a course. Therefore, it’s mandatory to have an LO for each course developed.
LO has several benefits to both the learner and the instructor. Some of them are listed below-
- Learner:
- Expected result after the completion of the course
- Understand if the course fulfills the learning needs
- Instructor:
- Development of precise training material aligned to the LO
- Development of assessment and knowledge check components
- Distinguish between need to know and nice to know elements in a course
LO has been further divided into two categories:
- Terminal Objectives (TO): Objectives that define the overall change in behavior after the completion of a particular course is called as TO.
Example- Identify compliance violations for an insurance agent. - Enabled Objectives (EO): Objectives that support TO are called EO. EO’s can be considered as sub-objectives that contribute to accomplish the TO.
Example: Indentify premium calculations compliance violations for an insurance agent.
In the above two examples, we seen that the TO defines compliance violations for an insurance agent which includes premium calculations compliance violations as well. However, an EO describes only compliance violations related to premium calculations. Thus, we see that EO supports the full picture of the course i.e. compliance violations which is a TO.
Let us see some more examples of TO and EO’s.
• Course on riding a bike
o TO: Demonstrate how to ride a bike
o EO: Demonstrate how to change the gear
• Course on safety in office premises
o TO: List the safety measures in an office
o EO: List fire safety measures in an office
• Course on company policies
o TO: Identify the company policies
o EO: Identify the human resources policies
