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Outline

Happy Friday! This week we're focusing on two questions related to learning objectives and course design:

  • Where should you put the learning objectives for an online course?
  • How can learning objectives be optimized to enhance learner performance?

Placement of Learning Objectives

I have a question for you: when you’re building an online course, where do you put the learning objectives (LOs)? At the beginning of the course, right? That’s a pretty standard practice, but one group of researchers asked: what if those LOs were interpolated in the text and distributed throughout the course, so that they appeared more closely to the content they were related to? Their experiment, reported in the journal CBE—Life Sciences Education, had three conditions: no LOs present; LOs presented to learners at the beginning of the course; and LOs presented to learners throughout the course. The results of this experiment suggest that presenting LOs during the course increased learning compared with not presenting LOs at all. It’s worth noting that, while the pattern of data was consistent with the possibility that interpolated LOs may be particularly beneficial, there was no statistically significant difference between presenting the LOs at the beginning or throughout a course.

Key Takeaway: Based on this one experiment, there was no evidence to suggest that instructional designers should deviate from the traditional way of presenting LOs at the beginning of the course.

Read More (open): Sana, F., Forrin, N. D., Sharma, M., Dubljevic, T., Ho, P., Jalil, E., & Kim, J.A. (2020). Optimizing the Efficacy of Learning Objectives through Pretests. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 19(3).

Optimizing Learning Objectives Using Pretesting

In a second experiment, reported in the same article, researchers took the results from the experiment discussed above and asked: how could the LOs be optimized to increase the benefit of placing them before each passage? This experiment had three conditions: LOs were presented before each passage; multiple choice (MC) pretest questions were presented before each passage; and LOs that also included the correct responses/key facts were presented before each passage. The results from this experiment demonstrated that learners in the MC condition had significantly higher performance in the course compared with those learners who read the traditional LOs statements or the statements that included the correct responses. This finding is supported by the pretesting effect, discussed in previous issues of LSW.

Key Takeaway: The data support the hypothesis that LOs, when delivered as pretests, can improve learning.

Read More (open): Sana, F., Forrin, N. D., Sharma, M., Dubljevic, T., Ho, P., Jalil, E., & Kim, J.A. (2020). Optimizing the Efficacy of Learning Objectives through Pretests. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 19(3).

Pets of Learning Science Weekly

Reader Tricia T. wrote this week and said, "Love the article on learning styles! Very helpful as I create onboarding content :) But this is the real reason I'm writing - here is Charlie, my 4-month-old boxer pup!" Dare I say that Charlie's cuteness quotient is only increased by his fashionable raincoat?

Send me (hi, I'm Julia) your pet pics at editor@learningscienceweekly.com.

Wondering why we’re including animal photos in a learning science newsletter? It may seem weird, we admit. But we’re banking on the baby schema effect and the “power of Kawaii.” So, send us your cute pet pics -- you’re helping us all learn better!