What are Student Objectives?

Student Objectives deal with detailed statements that specify various actions that students will be able to do successfully after they have completed the learning process of a particular lesson/course.

Key aspects in writing good Student Objectives

Student Objectives need to be:
• Observable
• Measureable

Student Objectives contain four parts:
1. A for audience – Who? Who are your learners? The students will be able to…

2. B for behaviors – What? What do you expect your students to be able to do? This must be observable or measurable behavior. If you can’t measure it with one of the five senses - seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, or smelling how can you be sure your audience really learned it.

3. C for condition – How? Under what circumstances or context will the learning occur? What will the student be given to accomplish the learning?

4. D for degree – How much? How is mastery measured? How well will the behavior need to be performed? What is the student suppose to accomplish at the end of the lesson? What knowledge, skills, or behaviors should the student be able to demonstrate? The objective always contains an active verb (e.g., list, describe, report, compare, analyze, evaluate, judge…).
Student Objectives serve as guidelines for assessment and selection of content and instructional strategies.

The following are examples of effective student centered objectives.
Comprehension Level
(C) Given the Declaration of Independence,
(A) the students will be able to
(B) identify 5 reasons why the American Colonies separated from England
(D) by the end of the period

Application Level
(C) Given a foreign language sentence written in the past tense,
(A) the students will be able to
(B) rewrite sentences in future tense
(D) with no grammatical errors

Synthesis Level
(C) Given a current events topic and a scoring rubric
(A) the students will be able to
(B) write an opinion essay
(D) at the proficient level on the essay rubric

Generally when teachers write student objectives on the board they put the behavior (B) and the degree of mastery (D). The audience (A) is always all the students and the condition (C) is usually addressed in the lesson.

Example:
• Add two digit numbers with no errors.
• Lay out a foundation of a 600 square foot house with less than a .1% error in the last corner.

Source: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/research/Write_Objectives.shtml from Dr. Doug Miller