Imagine that you need information about how popular Jeeps are in a certain area, and what colors seem to be preferred.
As part of your research, you send a group of people to watch a busy road. You give them the instruction, “Watch the cars go by for half an hour, and then report on the cars you saw.”
Now think about the different responses that request might get, even with the exact same cars going by.
This time imagine that the instruction given is, “Report on how many Jeeps you saw and what color they were.” This is likely to give you results that are both more consistent and more useful. That’s because in the second scenario you provided these fictitious people with learning objectives – specific guidance on how to prioritize their attention and retention.
Learning objectives are the number one improvement you can make to your training materials to improve results for your audience. This applies to formal training presentations, self-guided curriculums, or even DIY videos on YouTube.
Not only do learning objectives help your audience retain the most important information, they also help you keep your training materials focused and assist in creating assessment tools, like quizzes. That, however, will be a whole other post.
Did you find this helpful? Do you have any favorite tips for boosting the effectiveness of a training (video or otherwise)? Comment below and let me know!
Do you want to know more?
Why Does Writing Good Learning Objectives Matter? – Duke Learning Innovation & Lifetime Education