Creating a Learner-centered Syllabus
Writing Effective Course Learning ObjeCtives
Learning objectives tell students what they should be able to do as a result of taking your course and how students will demonstrate their learning.
Why Are Learning Objectives Important?
Well-written learning objectives lay the foundation of effective course design. They guide the development of assessments, learning activities, and instructional materials. Including course learning objectives in your syllabus helps students understand the purpose of the course, clarifies what is expected of them, and provides a roadmap for their learning journey.
What Is an Effective Learning Objective?
Here is an example learning objective:
“By the end of this course, students will be able to create a marketing plan for a non-profit organization focused on a new product launch.”
It’s effective because it is:
Student Centered:
Use Students as the Subject.
Specific:
Use the specific action verb “create”.
Measurable:
State how students will demonstrate their learning (“a marketing plan for a non-profit organization focused on a new product launch”).
Actionable:
Objectives should be achievable given the conditions in your course, such as timeframe, materials, learning activities.
How Do I Write Learning Objectives?
As you create your learning objectives, think in terms of what evidence students will provide to demonstrate a level of mastery of the objective. A well-constructed learning objective consists of two parts: an action verb to make the type of learning explicit, and the object.
Step 1: Identify the Object
Think about the skills, knowledge, attitudes, abilities that students will gain after completing your course.
Step 2: Determine the Mastery Level
Bloom’s Taxonomy is considered the best model to help you craft learning objectives in line with the type of thinking you hope your students will gain. The taxonomy is depicted as a pyramid of skills that are categorized in a hierarchical way, with lower-order skills building up to higher-order skills.
- Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long‐term memory.
- Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
- Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure for executing or implementing.
- Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts and determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.
- Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
- Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.
For example, perhaps an introductory course will concentrate on lower-level thinking such as recall of terms rather than higher-order thought such as analysis of ideas. It could also be the case that the course begins with defining concepts but develops into higher-level thinking.
Step 3: Use an Action Verb
Effective learning objectives should be specific and measurable, demonstrating not only what students will be able to do, but also how students can demonstrate their learning. The best practice is to use action verbs that relate to the kinds of thinking and activities that students must do to achieve that learning objective.
The table below provides a variety of verbs that map to each level in Bloom’s taxonomy. When writing your learning objectives, think about the desired mastery level in Bloom’s taxonomy, and then select a verb to write the statement.
| Bloom’s Level | Key Verbs (keywords) | Example Learning ObjectiveBy the end of this lesson, the learner will be able to… |
| Create | design, formulate, build, invent, create, compose, generate, derive, modify, develop. | …design an original homework problem dealing with the principle of conservation of energy. |
| Evaluate | choose, support, relate, determine, defend, judge, grade, compare, contrast, argue, justify, support, convince, select, evaluate. | …determine whether using conservation of energy or conservation of momentum would be more appropriate for solving a dynamics problem. |
| Analyze | classify, break down, categorize, analyze, diagram, illustrate, criticize, simplify, associate. | …differentiate between potential and kinetic energy. |
| Apply | calculate, predict, apply, solve, illustrate, use, demonstrate, determine, model, perform, present. | …calculate the kinetic energy of a projectile. |
| Understand | describe, explain, paraphrase, restate, give original examples of, summarize, contrast, interpret, discuss. | …describe Newton’s three laws of motion in her/his own words |
| Remember | list, recite, outline, define, name, match, quote, recall, identify, label, recognize. | …recite Newton’s three laws of motion. |
Learning objective examples adapted from Nelson Baker at Georgia Tech.
Step 4: Complete the Statement and Refine
Here are some examples of Learning Objectives:
“By the end of this course, you will be able to…
Critically evaluate other writers’ appraisals of jazz musicians and jazz recordings.
Compare and contrast the differences between regular and irregular warfare.
Explain why race is considered a social construct.
Interpret the geologic history of a landscape by identifying the relevant tectonic, rock-forming and deformational processes.”
CTE Resources at Boston College. (2025). Learning Objectives. https://cteresources.bc.edu/documentation/learning-objectives/
Teaching Innovation and Pedagogical Support at University of Arkansas. (2022).Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives. https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy/