Using Learning Objectives in Your Course

Enable learning objectives

Before you can use learning objectives, you must enable learning objectives in your course settings.

1. Click "Course Settings" under "Setup" from the left-hand menu. Expand the "Setup" folder if needed
2. At the bottom of the page of "Basic Settings" page, click the check box next to "Learning Objectives".
3. When you finish, click “Save Settings”.
4. Now you will see "Learning Objectives" under "Setup" from the left-hand menu

Configure learning objectives categories

Create new learning objective categories

Learning objectives can be organized into categories. Learning Objective Categories have a name, and optionally a description. Any learning objective not created within a category will be put in the automatically created category called “uncategorized”.

1. Click "Learning Objectives" under "Setup" from the left-hand menu. Expand the "Setup" folder if needed

2. Click the "+ Add New Learning Objective Category" or "Add Category" in the “options” button in the upper right-hand corner of this page to create a new category

3. Fill in Name and Description

4. Hit "Save Changes"

Edit existing learning objective categories

1. Expand the learning objective category that you want to edit
2. Hit "Edit" right under the learning objective category title
3. Hit "Save Changes" after editing

Configure learning objectives

Create new learning objectives

Learning objectives require four pieces of information to function properly: a name, a count to achieve, at least one linked assignment, and a minimum of two levels of completion towards that learning objective. 

1. Click "Learning Objectives" under "Setup" from the left-hand menu. Expand the "Setup" folder if needed

2. Click the "Add Learning Objective" in the “options” button in the upper right-hand corner of this page to create a new learning objective OR expand a category that you wish to add the learning objective to and hit "+ Add New Learning Objective"

3. Fill in the information. Below are the descriptions of each item:

   • Name: Typically, the name of the objective. For example, this could be something like “analytical reasoning”

   • Count to achieve: This is the number of linked assignments students will have to successfully complete in order to achieve this learning objective. 

   • Description: A space to communicate additional information to students including the purpose, meaning, etc. 

   • Levels: For each linked assignment, students can be evaluated on how well they demonstrated their proficiency towards a learning objective. At a minimum, two levels are required “not proficient” and “proficient”. You can also optionally add levels like “nearing proficiency” and “exceeds proficiency”. Each level can be called whatever you choose and be provided a description if desired. 

   • Linked assignments: click the text box under “linked assignments” to start adding assignments that will award this learning objective. Start typing the name of an assignment here, and a filtered list of assignments containing that text will appear in a drop down menu.

4. Click "Save Changes" when finish

Edit multiple learning objectives

1. Click "Edit all" in the top-right corner next to "Options"
2. On this page, the edit options for all of your learning objectives are on one page and you may add additional learning objectives as you go.

Edit individual learning objective

1. Locate the learning objective you want to edit
2. On the far right, click the gear logo under the "Options" column and select "Edit" from the drop down
3. Click "Save Changes" when finish

PRO TIP: It is also possible to link any number of learning objectives to a particular assignment, if that works better for your workflow. Navigate to any assignment, click the “edit” button, click the “details” tab, and you’ll see a list of all learning objectives in the course in the “linked learning objectives” box; check the box next to the name of any learning objective you want linked to this assignment!

Viewing student progress toward a learning objective

There are three primary ways to see an overview of your students’ progress towards a learning objective: 

1. Learning objective overview page
   • You can dig even deeper by clicking the progress bar for any given student. This will show you an overview of how that student has been evaluated on all of the assignments that meet that learning objective.
   • For any learning objective, you can see all students’ progress towards that objective by clicking its name on the “learning objectives” page. This will show you the number of proficiencies earned towards that learning objective, and a progress bar showing how close each student is to achieving the objective. 
2. For any assignment using learning objectives, if you view that assignment’s overview page, you will see a “learning objectives” tab. Click that tab to see a table showing all students’ proficiency towards all of the learning objectives attached to this assignment.
3. Export learning objectives outcomes data
   • In the left-hand navigation bar, click the “course data exports” link, found under “overview”. On this page there is a file type called “Learning Objectives Outcomes”. Clicking that link will email you a .csv file containing learning objectives outcome data for your course. 

The student experience of learning objectives

Once learning objectives are enabled in your course settings, students will see a learning objectives tab in the navigation bar near the top of their page. Clicking this tab will take them to a page where they can see the name of each learning objective in the course, the category they belong to, and their progress towards each. 

Students can then click the name of a learning objective to see an overview of how they’ve been assessed on that learning objective in each linked assignment: 

From the “assignments” tab, by clicking on the name of any assignment that has linked learning objectives, students can also click the “Learning Objectives” tab on that page to see all of the linked learning objectives for that assignment. If they’ve been assessed and provided feedback on specific objectives, they will be able to see that on this page as well. 

By default, an email notification will be sent to each student whenever they achieve a learning objective. This can be turned off, however, by the student clicking their name in the upper-right hand corner of the page, then clicking “my account”. From there, under “email settings”, they would uncheck the box next to “Email learning objective achieved”.