 So welcome to Learning Objectives to Foster Student Learning. My name is Ainsley Camps and I'm an Educational Developer here at the CTLT. And Amber Shaw is joining me today and we wanna welcome you to this session. In this session, we're gonna be exploring the benefits of using Learning Objectives, including the way that they help student learning. So we're gonna present a straightforward approach to doing this and you'll get a chance to practice some of the writing of Learning Objectives in your own context. So that's pretty exciting. But just before we begin, we wanna acknowledge that we are on the traditional ancestral unceded territories of the Musqueam people. And I want to thank Judy for this, Judy Chan for this framework that she's shared before in the past. And now I have taken some time to look at and reflect on a little bit more deeply. I will put the resource that we got this image from later on in the Wiki. If anyone's interested in reading this article, it's very interesting. So I'll put it there for your reading later. But this graphic, I think was helpful for me in gaining a deeper understanding of Indigenous worldview. It's kind of like a really nice way of depicting the basics of that, I guess. And we know that there is a great diversity among Indigenous people. We acknowledge that for sure. But there are some commonalities, I think in the worldview. And the one that's sticking out for me is that the interconnection for us between, for Indigenous people between the physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual parts of the person and how we are interconnected with the land and our relationships with two others that we share the land with. And that means all other beings, trees, rocks, everything, and all of the people and animals that we know. So how does this relate to learning objectives, you ask? Well, what we are doing here is we are developing students that will go out and become good citizens, hopefully. And while they're here with us, they'll be making decisions about what they will study, how they will study, how they will contribute to our community here and how they are preparing for their contributions in the future. And so it's really important for us to think about what we want students to take away from our courses. And so that is how we begin to design what we do is through learning objectives, what is it that we want students to take away from their experience in our classrooms? So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So I'm gonna hand it over to Amber to introduce herself in and go over the agenda. Hi, my name's Amber. My pronouns are she, her, and I was born and educated on the traditional lands of the Powhatan people. And today I am on the traditional ancestral and unceded Tories of the Musqueam. Thanks, Ainsley. So our agenda for today is we are gonna do what are learning objectives? So we'll go over definition. Why do we use them? We're gonna do how to write learning objectives. We're gonna practice writing one and we'd like you to actually write it out. Come back to it later and share with a partner. So we'll practice and share. We'll do an introduction to Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy. And then at the end, we'll hopefully have that nice, beautiful learning outcome that you're super happy with at the very end. There may be time for Q&A. If we go all the way to time, I know Ainsley is often available by email and so am I, which I can put in the chat box. And can we go to the next slide? Of course. Thank you. Okay, so here's what I want you to do. Don't enter anything in the chat yet. So we're gonna try something. Don't put it in the chat yet, but think on a scale of one to five. One is not at all and five is I should be facilitating this workshop. How comfortable are you in writing learning outcomes? So I'd like you to put a number in the chat but don't hit enter yet. We're gonna try and do a waterfall. I'm excited. I wanna see if this works. So we're all gonna put a number in the chat box. How comfortable are you writing your learning outcomes from one to five? And then when I say go, we're gonna all hit enter and we're gonna see a waterfall go down in the chat. So take just a minute. Think about how comfortable you are with learning outcomes and writing them out. Get your number, put it in the chat and then we're gonna do three, two, one. You're gonna hit enter. Ready? Three, two, one, go. Oh, that's so cool. I love it. Nice. All right. So we got season four today. Two, three, four, 2.5. 2.5, nice. Okay. Judy, you're a four. Oh no. 2.5. All right. All right. Amazing. Thank you. Okay, good to know. So if we can go to the next meta slide. So this is our learning objectives about learning objectives. I think this is like the most meta slide I've ever done. All right. So by the end of this session, you should be able to describe the benefits of using learning objectives, write effective learning objectives and practice using Benjamin Bloom's revised taxonomy to write your learning objectives. So those are our learning objectives about learning objectives. Huh? Media. Any questions in the chat or if you wanna unmute your mic before we jump in and get started? I do have a question. Yeah. Hi, Amber and Ansley and Judy, nice to meet you. This, I don't know how relevant it is, but I was wondering if learning outcomes can be used interchangeably with learning objectives. Yeah. So that's a great question. And I've seen, I think Judy, Ansley and I would give three different answers. So I can quickly give my answer in that I think I use them interchangeably, but I have seen them used to talk about different levels. So sometimes you'll see objectives and outcomes if you're talking at a program level versus sort of a course level versus sort of a just a 50 minute lesson level. And if that distinction is made, that definition is really helpful. I think I use them interchangeably, but Ansley, I'll throw that to you. How do you use them? Well, you know what? I think the next couple of slides are gonna answer that question, you know, from my perspective. So we'll see, but I really agree with you, Amber. They're interchangeable. For today's, for the purpose of today, we'll say they're interchangeable. So what are they? What are learning objectives? And why do we use them if I can change the slide? And so I can ask you to define what a learning outcome is, but I'm hoping you don't mind that I just continue and give you that definition, the definition that we will be working with today because I wanna get into the meat of writing them. I don't want to take too much time, you know, talking about what they are. So to establish what they are from our perspective, they are what a learner knows or can do as a result of the learning, okay? So I'm switching both two sets of slides here, so it just takes me a little while. So to dig down a little bit deeper, they're specific, they're measurable, they're short-term observable student behaviors that we use to evaluate the student and ourselves. We use those things to evaluate where we're at and where we would like to go. And then there is, you know, they are a description of a performance that we want learners to be able to do maybe at the end of a course, at the end of a lesson or module. And they focus on student learning. And this is a very important part of what learning objectives are. They're not, we're not opening somebody's brain and putting the funnel in and just, you know, just adding stuff. There's a transactional thing that's happening here. And we are focused on the student and what they will take away. So it's really important, as you'll see in future slides here, it's really important that we focus on the learner when we're writing and designing learning objectives. So as Amber said, there are different levels of learning objectives. And so there is the program level. So what kind of person, you know, what kind of student, how do we want someone to be prepared when they graduate from the program? At the course level, you know, are they prepared for the next, are they prepared for a level higher when they leave our course? I have they, are they prepared when they enter our course? And then the module and lesson level are kind of nested in there. Everything is kind of fits into everything else. And it just gets bigger and bigger into the program. So today, what we're gonna be looking at is just the lesson level. Okay, so hopefully it doesn't change. So here we are. I just, it came to me not too long ago that not everybody knows or has played darts, but this is a dart board and it's a game. And the object of the game is to throw the dart and hit this little red circular thing in the middle. And you can see the points, you know, going out. So if you hit that white circle outside, you get eight points, but 10 is the middle and that's where we're aiming for with the dart. So this is kind of an analogy for how we think about learning objectives. Because, you know, you can imagine if you didn't have a dart board, it would be pretty hard to play the game. You need to be focused on some kind of goal. And so that's what learning outcomes are. They're guide posts in designing our activities and assessments and they tell us, they tell the students what they'll get out of the course and how they, like we're teaching them how to learn to throw the dart to hit the bullseye. So the student knows what they're aiming for. They know how they're gonna get there. And it gives students an opportunity to assess their readiness and where they are as they progress through the course. So hopefully now you can recognize how important they are. So how does one write an effective learning objective or learning outcome that fosters student learning? That does all these things. So I mentioned earlier, really important that the first consideration when we're writing learning outcomes is that they focus on the learner. So what the student will learn, how they will learn and the conditions in which they will learn. So here's some examples. By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to, so we're addressing the learner. We're telling them, this is where we hope you'll be at the end of this lesson and engage student who's involved and participates in the classes. This is where they'll be at the end of the laboratory activity or the end of the lesson. Okay, and as I said earlier, specific. So as for a paramedic, let's say, being able to assess a person's vital signs within a certain amount of time, that might be an important learning objective. So we've given them specifically what it is they're going to be learning. They're going to be learning how to assess a person's vital signs within a certain context because we know that paramedics need to be quick in what they're doing. They're in an emergency situation. So within a certain amount of time is an important context and it's very specific to their job. So Amber's checking on the chat box. So she'll let me know if you have any questions. And so I'm just kind of going through this little teach piece so that we can begin to, we can be on the same page so we can start to write some learning outcomes ourselves. So specific means three things. So when I was talking about paramedics, we're talking about the verb assess. We're talking about the subject. What they are going to assess is a person's vital signs and the context of criteria under which a paramedic is required to do this is within a certain amount of time. So here's another example. By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to create a social media plan for a nonprofit organization. So this is very specific. We could make a social media plan for an organization that is not a marketing, an organization that's marketing to their customers that's trying to make money. And this would, I think you would agree would have a different focus, a different context than one that is created for a nonprofit organization. So I'm just gonna give you some more examples here. So you think about this one. By the end of this module, students will be able to select appropriate materials for use in building wood-framed houses. So just take a minute to think about where's the verb? What is the subject and what is the context? And if you feel super excited, I mean, unmute and tell me what those three things are. But you don't have to. It's up to you. It depends on how excited you are. So here's the answer. The verb is to select. We want them to be able to select appropriate materials. So the materials that are appropriate, that's very specific. And the context is in the context of building wood-framed homes. It's not a cement apartment building. It's not a firehouse. It's not a church. It's a wood-framed home. Okay, hopefully everybody's with me here. I'm looking at the screen and I just see a bunch of like little names. So I hope everybody's okay. So here's another example. By the end of this lesson, students would be able to apply water sterilization techniques to purify drinking water. Thanks for the thumbs up. So tell me now, where's the verb, the subject and the context here? Can I have a brave volunteer to unmute themselves and just rhyme off what those three things are? I can volunteer. So I would say that here, the action verb would be apply. The subject would be water sterilization techniques and the context would be to purify the drinking water. Excellent. A plus. So those are some examples of specific and learner-centered learning outcomes. Because yeah, we address the student in each one of those examples as well. So we covered the learner-centered aspect. So now we'd like to give you a turn to write a learning outcome yourself. And so we're gonna ask you at this time just to work on your own and think about a course that you are teaching or may want to be teaching in the future or your discipline as a whole and just think about a learning outcome that you could write down at this stage that has all those specific components and addresses the learner. And we'll give you a few minutes to do that. And then Amber's gonna add just another layer to this, another helpful layer to the writing of learning outcomes, which is learning domains. We mentioned that earlier in the learning outcomes for this workshop. And then we'll get together in groups and kind of see how we did. So we will give you how many minutes do you think, Amber, two or three? Three? Okay. So we're gonna give you three minutes. So that means that it'll be 25 after. Ready for the next slide? Yep, that'd be great. Okay, we've got something in the chat. It's part of the reason for focusing on verbs to engage the learner in taking charge of their own learning rather than being passive. That's a great reason to focus on the verb. Yeah. That is great. Yeah, active learning. And I think there's a session on active learning tomorrow morning. Yes, come back for that. It's in person, so it's gonna be super fun. We're gonna be doing a whole bunch of really engaging, taking charge activities. Neat. Yeah, let's dive into the verbs, hey? All right. So Bloom's learning domain, here we go. So Benjamin Bloom came up with learning domains. This has been around for quite a while. It's a set of three domains used for classifying educational learning objectives or outcomes into those levels that everyone wants to jump into of how complex and how specific we're writing those learning outcomes. So we have three icons here. One is the hand, one is the head, one is the heart. And so we're using the hand as our icon for psychomotor skills. So if you have something that involves a psychomotor skill, those would be a learning objective in that domain. And then a lot of learning objectives that I see at UBC fall into the cognitive domain. And then we've got learning objectives that are in the domain, what we call the affective domain. And so that's things about values and feelings and reflections. And I really like the three domains that helps me think through. But in practice, writing learning outcomes very often, I'll have a learning outcome that might go across two, if not all three domains. So it's not really the box, box, box, but it's helpful for me to sort of structure that way. Let's, yeah, dive into the cognitive. All right, so by the end of this module, learners will be able to define. So if you're looking for students to provide a definition, that would be in the cognitive domain. So maybe they're defining photosynthesis, its significance. By the end of this lesson, students will be able to list the subfields of anthropology. So these are sort of cognitive things. And we're gonna look just in a second at those steps in that domain. And the next slide, here they are. So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, thinking about taking our students up from just knowledge. So definitions, which definitions are hard. I spend a long time in one of my classes just going through definitions and getting students to define things. So just because it's sort of at the bottom of the cognitive domain, doesn't mean that it isn't really challenging. There's some sample verbs there. So if we're in that knowledge part, we would get students to define or identify or label. Sometimes I forget students can't identify, right? Before I start pushing them up the scale. So it's good to think about what students can do, getting them pushing up from knowledge to comprehension. Application is quite a different thing, being able to apply something or demonstrate something. Going into analysis and evaluation and synthesis is quite challenging, right? And then you get those sample verbs up there. So there's some classes where, it might be a first year class and we stay down in the knowledge and comprehension and then moving up into second and third and fourth year. There might be first year classes where we do get all the way up to analysis and evaluation, but this is sort of where you think about students from the program level and then going down into what do I actually want them to do today? Yeah, nice. Can we go psychomotor? Okay, so by the end of this module, learners will be able to perform a backward dive. That's the psychomotor skill, it's very physical. By the end of this lesson, students will be able to calibrate a pH meter before measuring samples. So this is a learning outcome I took from my course in that I think it's part cognitive and it's part psychomotor, but there is a psychomotor skill that students need to do in order to physically calibrate a pH meter before they measure samples. So that's a good one to kind of think across domains. And then here's Bloom's taxonomy. I think there's seven in the psychomotor. So we go from the bottom, we've got perception, and we can go all the way up to adaptation and organization. I really like using Bloom's. I have it sort of like stuck to the wall in my office. I get those nice verbs so I can say, what do I want students to do? Do I want them to be able to recognize? Do I want them to be able to duplicate something or all the way up? Do I want them to be able to do something very original like design and originate? So those are in the psychomotor domain. And then our third domain would be the affective. I spend some time here in my courses now. I didn't use to, but for example, a learning outcome in the affective domain would be by the end of this module, learners will acknowledge, excuse me, the land that we're living and working on. So the acknowledgement is an affective learning outcome. By the end of this class, students will advocate. That's much higher up, right? As we'll see for the new scholarship program for BC Indigenous students. So if we look at Bloom's domain going here, there's five of them. So at the sort of base where we would start, we have things like acknowledging, being aware of something, paying attention to something. That's really important before you start moving up. I have jumped in too high with students, not realizing that they, I needed to start down here with the accepting and acknowledging before asking them to go all the way up to something like defending and advocating and acting on something from, especially like a social justice perspective. So it's helpful for me to have those verbs and to go up and Ainsley has dropped in the chat box, the Google doc that has these on there. Thank you. Amazing. Okay, so before we practice a little bit, are there any questions, anybody said now you have access to the document? Are there any questions about the three learning domains or any of those verbs sort of scaffolding up before we jump in and use them? I actually, I have a question Amber, if I can jump in. When we did the activity where we wrote our own learning objective, I noticed that I wanted to use two different verbs. I wanted to use both. Learners will be able to identify and implement. Just wondering if you can speak too, if that's appropriate to use two different verbs if we should try and just be using one in light of these categories. Yeah, so from my experience, and I do the same thing, I have those, especially at my course level. So in my syllabus, I might have two verbs because over the, because those would be sort of at a lower level and a higher level. And so from my course learning objectives, I might have identify and implement or identify and do something. And so by the end of the course, we've covered that. And so those two, putting those two together makes sense to me on the course level. I think, and Ainsley wants to jump in. So like to me though, those are two distinct learning outcomes and it would happen at different times in the course. When we're talking on this level, the module and lesson level, like what Amber's saying about, scaffolding someone up, like having some activities that lead from one to the other is something you're gonna be doing. So it's kind of like, this is our learning outcome for now, the first verb. And then we're working through some activities that are gonna bring you up to the implementation level. So just two different perspectives, objectives, outcomes, two different perspectives. Thank you for your question. Yeah, I also think that, not really in the scope of this very short workshop, but when you're aligning, your learning outcomes with your assessments, that would be someplace where I would look at those and say, where in the assessment am I testing, am I testing it down here or am I testing it up here, assuming? So that's a whole other workshop, but awesome question. Yeah, and we will be doing some other workshops we've decided, so yeah, so stay tuned. Nice. If there aren't any, that was awesome. Yeah, let's practice, let's do it. So you have your learning objective from before, like 20 minutes ago that you wrote. So now we'd like you to look at it now that you have the Bloom's taxonomy. And maybe you already did this and that's awesome. See if you can identify the domain. So whether you think that it's a psychomotor, whether you think it's a cognitive or whether you think it's an affective or maybe you think it's sort of going in between two, identify the level of learning in there, in the taxonomy and then choose an action verb or look at the verb that you picked and see if that makes sense to you that specifies where your learner is and then just take a minute and revise and get that really happy solid in the Bloom's taxonomy. We're gonna give you five minutes because you might have more than one to do. I'm happy to answer any questions on the mic or in the chat during those five minutes, but that's gonna bring us to 942. So we're gonna take five minutes. The Google Doc is up there. So you have all of those nice objectives. I was just saying, hello. I was just saying that I just, I had an opportunity to visit one of the rooms while you were working and what I saw was like a lot of really awesome stuff going on. And one of the things that I noticed was kind of like this, just the nesting of say a course level objective and then a lesson level objective and how difficult it is sometimes, like really, I guess we do need to start with the course level objectives, like what we want to end up with and then we kind of divide it down from there. So we think about what are the modules? What are the pieces that we need to reach that course level one? And then what are the lesson levels objectives that will lead to each module? So it is super overwhelming to kind of try and in one hour come up with a lesson level objective because there's so much sort of thought and dividing that has to happen from the course down to the lesson level. So I just wanted to say to you that it is, you won't be able to do it maybe today, but hopefully this has started you thinking about how to write a specific and learner centered learning objective and you've started to think about the objectives on from the program level right down to the lesson level and that's kind of like what we were hoping that you would get out of today. And so with that, we'll return to our original question. And maybe this time you can just add your number to the chat, we won't do a waterfall this time. We'll just ask you to add your number to the chat. Like, are you more comfortable now than you were at the beginning of this workshop? Well, that's heartening, it seems like wow. 3.7. Yeah, woohoo. So it looks like we got like a strong B anyways and moving some people are moving into the A minus A area. Oh my goodness, Judy, she came from a four to a 4.4. So I'm happy about that because, you know, that's good, Judy. I'm glad I was able, we were able to do that. So yeah, so thank you. Amber's put the Qualtrics survey, it's three questions. If you can just go in there, these questions are not particularly about the facilitation of this workshop, but more about your experience of the Summer Institute, the CTLT Summer Institute. We really appreciate your input on that. It does affect programming. So if you don't mind doing that, that would be great. Amber's added our contact information. Contact us, stay in contact. Tell us about your learning outcomes and how you're making out there. And we'd be glad to help. Both of us are super excited and interested to talk about learning objectives with anybody. We're just, we love it. And it's 10 o'clock. So we'll let you go with that. Thank you for coming. Thank you for participating. Take care, everybody.