Think back to a great training session you attended. What do you remember? If you’re like most of us, it’s memorable because the instructor was engaging, the content was relevant, and there was both practice and feedback. Even more important, you were able to take the learning back to your job and put it to use. Can you recall the learning objectives? Probably not. Let’s face it–learning objectives are not for the learner; they’re for the people building the training.

If you aren’t familiar with the term, a learning objective is an explanation of expected outcomes of the course. Learning objectives were originally divided into the cognitive domain and the psychomotor domain. Cognitive domain objectives are actions related to information or knowledge. For example, “Learner will recall the updated policy.” Psychomotor domain objectives are physical actions the learner will perform. For example, “Learner will arrange a display to match a given model.” Then there’s the difference between terminal and enabling objectives. And did we include our ABCDs: audience, behavior, condition, and degree? Learning objectives have an art and science all their own.

So what’s wrong with learning objectives? Technically nothing. It’s how L&D professionals use them that’s the issue.

Change happens so quickly in the workplace now that it’s easy for us to get lost in building learning objectives. By the time we’ve captured them all, they no longer apply. They don’t capture what our leaners will need to do after a learning experience. Dead learning objectives use vague words, lack relevance to students, and are difficult to measure on the job. For example:

• Participant will understand changes to the process.

• Learner will recall the reasons for the changes.

• Learner will be more empathetic and caring.

In our session at ATD23, Are Learning Objectives Dead, we will refocus our efforts on a better use of our valuable time: creating performance objectives. Unlike a learning objective, a performance objective is something a learner will accomplish after the learning experience. Performance objectives can be measured, they help you build the right solution without a lot of fluff, and you can write and apply them quickly.

Want to learn how to create performance objectives? Join us on Sunday, May 21 at 3 p.m. Together we will transform ineffective learning objectives into useful performance objectives and learn how to design them better the first time.