Educational Objectives

Paper Masters suggests a model introduction for your research paper on educational objectives:

Educational objectives help students know what they should be able to do at the end of a lesson. In higher education, objectives state what students should be able to do at the end of their course work. Objectives should be communicated to the learner, so that the learner can take more ownership of the learning process. Educational objectives are essential for the learning process.

Educational Objectives help to:

• Focus the lesson
• Provide learning goals for students
• Help teachers form a basis for evaluation
• Solidify the concrete nature of the task
• Focus on an observable action to reach an end goal

Educational Objectives and Educators

Educational objectives are statements that educators write to explain what students performance is expected at the end of a lesson. Objectives should be concrete, not too narrow, not too broad, and should include higher cognitive tasks. Objectives should be written with a focus on the verb. The verb is the focus of the objective because it tells what the students should be able to do. The objective must have an observable action that it requires the learner to do and improve student outcome. For example, "The student will list the causes of the Civil War and explain how they fueled the growing conflict between the North and the South." Vague verbs like "understand," "appreciate," or "know" should be avoided because there is no way to concretely measure student mastery.

Educational objectives also provide clear assessment criteria for educators to evaluate students, their own instruction, and courses. Assessments should be written to evaluate student progress toward mastery of the objective. The focus of the assessment remains on the objective verb.