Teaching and Learning Design
What are the learners' outcomes, or objectives?
Designing a distance learning course is an exercise in planning the most effective and efficient use of a learner's time. That means planning the best use of available technologies for communicating the most important information and supporting the learning activity possible in that time.

To ensure the most efficient use of a learner's time, designers need to focus every decision on achieving specific learning outcomes, or objectives.

A learning objective is a precise statement of:

  • Exactly what the learner will be able to do at the end of the learning session (the terminal behavior)
  • The conditions under which the learner should be able to do it
  • The standard or criteria to which the student should be able to perform the terminal behavior.

Course designers should spend much time early in the design process in defining the course content as learning objectives.

 
 

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