Creating online courses
Guide
How to Create an Online Course
How to create an online course step by step: define the learner, test demand, write objectives, outline lessons, add practice and tests, then pilot and launch.
10 min read
Guide
How to Write Learning Objectives
A learning objective is one sentence stating what a learner will be able to do after a lesson or course, written so that you could check whether they can. To write one, name the learner, choose an observable verb at the right level of thinking, describe the conditions, and say how well they must do it. Then make sure an assessment asks for exactly that behavior.
Last updated 10 min read
Creating online courses
Key takeaways
- A learning objective describes what the learner will do, not what the teacher will cover.
- Use observable verbs such as calculate, compare or design, and avoid understand, know and learn about, which cannot be checked directly.
- The ABCD format, covering audience, behavior, condition and degree, turns a vague aim into a testable objective.
- Bloom's taxonomy helps you pick a verb that matches the level of thinking you want, from remembering to creating.
- Every objective should be matched by at least one assessment item that asks for the same behavior at the same level.
What learning objectives are, and what they are not
A learning objective states what a learner will be able to do at the end of a unit of teaching. The key word is do. “This module covers supply and demand” describes content. “Learners will predict how a price ceiling changes the quantity supplied, using a supply and demand diagram” describes a performance you can watch, mark or test. That difference is the whole point: an objective is written so that both you and the learner can tell whether it has been met.
The surrounding terms are used loosely, so it helps to know the distinctions most course designers draw:
- Goal: a broad aim for a whole course or program, such as becoming confident reading financial statements.
- Learning objective: a specific, checkable performance for a lesson or module, such as calculating a company's current ratio from a balance sheet.
- Learning outcome: what learners can demonstrably do once the course is over, often used for course-level statements. Many institutions use objective and outcome interchangeably; the label matters less than whether the statement names an observable performance.
The four parts of a good learning objective
A widely taught way to write objectives is the ABCD format. It builds on Robert Mager's work on instructional objectives, which held that a useful objective states the performance, the conditions under which it happens, and the criterion for success. ABCD adds the audience, giving four parts:
Putting the four parts together
Combined, the parts read like this: “Given a short news article, learners will identify its main claim and two pieces of supporting evidence, quoting each accurately.” Not every objective needs all four written out. Lesson-level objectives often leave the audience implicit, and the degree may live in the marking scheme instead. Drafting with all four still forces you to decide what success looks like, which is the hard and useful part of the exercise.
- Audience: who will do it, such as learners, participants or a specific group like new team leads.
- Behavior: what they will do, as an observable verb and its object, such as write a thesis statement or identify a logical fallacy.
- Condition: the circumstances, tools or information they have, such as given a dataset of survey responses, or without notes.
- Degree: how well they must do it, such as with no calculation errors, within ten minutes, or in at least eight of ten cases.
Choose verbs for learning objectives with Bloom's taxonomy
The verb is the most important word in a learning objective, and Bloom's taxonomy is the standard tool for choosing it. The original framework was published in 1956 by a group led by Benjamin Bloom. A revised version published in 2001 by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl renamed the levels as verbs, and it is the version most widely used today. It orders six kinds of thinking from simpler to more complex:
Two cautions when choosing a level
Higher is not automatically better. An introductory lesson may rightly aim at remembering and understanding, because learners cannot analyze material they cannot yet recall. And the verb should describe the thinking the assessment will actually require: analyze on paper means nothing if the test only asks learners to recognize a definition.
| Level | What the learner does | Useful verbs | Example objective |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remember | Recalls facts and terms | list, name, define, recall | List the three branches of the US federal government |
| Understand | Explains ideas in their own words | explain, summarize, classify, paraphrase | Summarize the argument of a journal article in one paragraph |
| Apply | Uses a method in a new case | calculate, solve, use, demonstrate | Calculate the compound interest on a five-year loan |
| Analyze | Breaks material into parts and sees how they relate | compare, differentiate, organize, attribute | Compare two translations of the same poem for tone and meaning |
| Evaluate | Makes a judgment using criteria | assess, critique, justify, defend | Assess the credibility of three sources against stated criteria |
| Create | Produces something new and coherent | design, compose, construct, plan | Design a two-week revision schedule for a final exam |
How to write learning objectives, step by step
Whether you are writing for a single lesson or a whole course, the process is the same:
- 1Start with the end: write one sentence describing what someone who completes the course can do in the real world.
- 2Break that result into the smaller capabilities it depends on. Each one becomes a candidate objective.
- 3For each capability, choose the Bloom level you are aiming for and a verb from that level.
- 4Add the object of the verb: exactly what is being calculated, compared or designed.
- 5Add a condition and a degree where they matter, especially when the tools available or the accuracy required change the task.
- 6Read the objective aloud and ask whether you could watch someone do it and tell if they succeeded. If not, rewrite it.
- 7Write or choose the assessment item that would prove it, before writing the lesson itself.
- 8Cut or merge objectives until each lesson has only as many as you will actually teach and test.
Learning objectives examples: weak vs strong
Weak objectives tend to fail in a few predictable ways: a verb you cannot observe, a missing object, a description of the teacher's activity instead of the learner's, or a scope too large for one lesson. These rewrites show the difference.
Why the strong versions are longer
The stronger versions carry more detail, and that is normal. A useful test is whether two different teachers, given the same objective, would write roughly the same assessment for it. If the objective leaves them guessing, it is still too vague.
| Weak objective | Problem | Stronger version |
|---|---|---|
| Understand photosynthesis | Understanding cannot be observed directly | Explain, using a labeled diagram, how light energy is converted into chemical energy during photosynthesis |
| Learn about the causes of World War I | Describes exposure, not a performance | Rank four causes of World War I by importance and justify the ranking with evidence |
| The instructor will demonstrate pivot tables | Describes what the teacher does | Build a pivot table that summarizes monthly sales by region from a raw dataset |
| Master Spanish verbs | Scope far too large, with no condition | Conjugate regular -ar verbs in the present tense without a reference table |
| Appreciate Romantic poetry | An attitude, not a checkable skill | Identify two features of Romantic poetry in an unseen poem and explain their effect |
Align objectives with lessons and assessments
Objectives earn their keep only when the rest of the course follows them. The education researcher John Biggs called this constructive alignment: objectives, teaching activities and assessments should all point at the same performance. If an objective asks learners to evaluate sources, the lesson should give them practice evaluating sources with feedback, and the test should ask them to evaluate a source, not to define credibility.
A simple audit makes misalignment visible. List your objectives down one side of a page and your assessment items across the top, then mark which items test which objectives. An objective with no marks is not being checked. An item with no matching objective is testing something you never promised to teach. For ideas on checks that test real thinking rather than recall, see designing assessments AI can't fake.
Share the objectives with learners at the start of each lesson. They preview what matters and let learners check their own progress, which is especially useful in self-paced courses where nobody else is checking.
How many learning objectives you need, and at what level
Objectives work at different scales. A course might have a handful of broad outcomes, each module a few objectives that build toward them, and each lesson one to three narrow ones. The levels should nest: every lesson objective serves a module objective, and every module objective serves a course outcome. If a lesson objective serves nothing above it, question whether the lesson belongs.
Resist listing everything a lesson touches. A long list dilutes attention and is hard to assess honestly. Ask whether you will write at least one assessment item for each objective; if not, it is a topic rather than an objective, and it can appear in the lesson without being promised. For how objectives fit into the wider build, see how to create an online course.
Keep reading
More guides like this one
- Creating online coursesGuide
How to Turn a PDF or Lecture Notes Into an Online Course
PDF to course, step by step: audit your notes or slides, write down what you used to say aloud, split it into lessons, add tests and pilot it before launch.
10 min read - PublishingGuide
How to Turn Your Book into an Online Course (Step by Step)
Turning a book or PDF into an online course means building a syllabus, lessons and tests around it. Here is how to structure that course, step by step.
7 min read
01What is the difference between learning objectives and learning outcomes?
In common usage, a learning objective states what a lesson or module intends learners to be able to do, while a learning outcome describes what learners can demonstrably do once a course is complete, often at a broader level. Many institutions use the two terms interchangeably. What matters more than the label is that the statement names an observable performance you can assess.
02What verbs should I avoid in learning objectives?
Avoid verbs that describe a state of mind rather than an action: understand, know, learn, appreciate, be aware of and be familiar with. You cannot observe them directly, so you cannot check them. Replace each with the action that would show it, such as explain, identify, compare or apply. Broad course goals can use softer language, but lesson objectives should not.
03How many learning objectives should a lesson have?
Usually one to three. A lesson that teaches one idea well rarely needs more, and every objective you list should be matched by at least one assessment item. If a lesson seems to need many objectives, it is often trying to cover too much and would work better split into two or more shorter lessons.
04What is the ABCD format for learning objectives?
ABCD stands for audience, behavior, condition and degree. Audience is who will perform the task, behavior is the observable action, condition is the circumstances or tools involved, and degree is the standard for success. For example: given a balance sheet, learners will calculate the current ratio with no arithmetic errors. Not every objective spells out all four, but drafting with them sharpens the statement.
05Do learning objectives have to be measurable?
They should be observable, which in practice makes them assessable. Some aims, such as curiosity or appreciation of a subject, matter but cannot be checked directly. Those belong in course goals. Where possible, translate them into behaviors that would show them, such as choosing to read a further text or defending a preference with evidence from the work.
06What are SMART learning objectives?
SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. The checklist comes from management goal-setting and is often applied to learning objectives. It overlaps with ABCD: specific and measurable match the behavior and degree, and time-bound is a kind of condition, such as by the end of the module. ABCD is usually more practical for lesson objectives because it forces an observable verb; SMART is a useful final check that an objective is realistic.
Creating online courses
Your book is already most of a course.
Upload a manuscript or a PDF and Cavua builds the syllabus, lessons and tests — you edit and approve everything before it publishes.