Fink discusses learning goals on pages 8-12 of his text, A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning.

For the purposes of this course, we will be using Fink's term - learning goals. You might also hear course objectives and learning outcomes as they are often used interchangeably. For our purpose, we will be developing learning goals, which are usually listed as statements of purpose for the course: By the end of this course, students should be able to ______________. This is what they need to know. These are the skills they need to develop.

Things to think about: What are the three (or four) goals for your course? These goals do not need to be in order of importance. What is more important is how they will be assessed and measured. What environment will you need to create to guide your students through the learning process in order to develop those skills and learn those concepts? How will you ask them to demonstrate competency and understanding of the material? How are you assessing and measuring those attempts?

Please read about learning goals in Fink's text (pages 8-12) and begin thinking about the learning goals you would like to develop for your course.

For the course design institute, we came up with a list of learning goals. A simple way to state your learning goal is - By (time), students will be able to (verb) (goal)

By the end of this institute, participants will be able to:

Design or redesign (verb) a course built on learner-centered design principles using backward course design (goal)
Create and revise (verb) learning objectives for their course (goal)
Select (verb) instructional materials that contribute to student achievement of stated objectives (goal)

These goals should be specific, measurable, reasonable, and contained within a fixed period of time.

Learning Goals

Following the principles of backward design, once you know what your course goals are, then you can start to plan how many steps you think it will take to get there, what each step includes in terms of information and activity, and how to assess before moving on. You begin at the end, with the goals, and then guide your students towards that goal.

Things to think about: While the ending is the same for all students, the starting points may be different. Each student is unique with different skill sets and needs. Your job is to determine where help is needed the most. Some students may need more help on certain steps, while others may not require any additional assistance. The help and support that each student needs in a particular moment to complete a particular task or activity is called scaffolding. Ideally, those students who require some assistance at the beginning will need less support as they begin to master the concepts.