In this blog, we will discuss how you can identify the learning goals to carter better online learning experiences for your students.
Goals are the factors that control people’s behavior in a meaningful way. Without goals, nobody would get up in the morning, brush their teeth, finish their degree, and achieve professional success in life.
When achieved, these set goals also fill us with pride and motivate us to take the next steps in the future for betterment.
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Online course content that is simply ‘presented’ to learners is almost like standing on an open road i.e clueless. Such content doesn’t encourage or motivate learners.
For this reason, learning goals are essential, especially when teaching students. Without a goal, resources are wasted and the purpose of learning becomes vague. As a result, learners become frustrated, have negative feedback, and have high dropout rates.
But what do learning goals mean in concrete terms?
Simply put, learning goals refer to measurable statements that mention what students are expected to learn in a particular course.
Having an approach to learning can lead to success. If you set up your online teaching business on clear goals and supervise it in a structured manner, then learning with you will have effective results such as satisfied students, positive feedback, and high course completion rates.
Table of Contents
How to identify your learning goal in 7 easy steps
Many times educators fail to achieve learning goals because they don’t plan the steps to rightly identify them.
Let’s take a look at the steps below to understand how to get started with classifying or identifying learning goals.
Reflect on the results you want to achieve
Take a closer look at what you’re trying to achieve with your online course. Ask yourself if the ultimate objective of your online course is something you truly want? Consider if it’s important enough for you to spend hours of time and effort on it.
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Instead of preparing a long list of goals to achieve from your online course, you can ask yourself questions to determine which goals matter the most to you, and then focus on the said few.
Pause a while and think to yourself that what is the difference that you are trying to make by teaching students online.
Using Bloom’s taxonomy identified three domains of educational activities to determine: Cognitive knowledge (mental skills), affective attitude (emotional skills), and psychomotor Skills (physical skills) to determine the right learning domain.
Ensure the learning goal is SMART
The next step in the process to identify the learning goal is to ensure that the goals meet the SMART criteria. In other words, you need to make sure that your online course goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Time-bound
You need to specify your goal’s purpose. If your learning goal is specific, it automatically gets easier to track the progress and know whether you met the goal.
Use the SMART approach and ask questions related to your online course. Questions like:
- What is the knowledge that the learner will gain from your course?
- What is the most essential information that your learners should comprehend?
- How can learners apply the knowledge learned practically?
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The more specific you are about the learning goal, the higher the chances of you achieving the goal.
Jot down the learning goals
When you write the learning goals down, you make them more tangible or achievable.
Instead of having a vague idea of what you want to achieve in your mind, you can write them down and keep them somewhere visible like on mirrors, computer screens, office desks, etc.
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When you put effort to do so, you remain motivated to keep working on your learning goals. They remind you of why you started with your online course in the first place.
Such a tactic of positive tone usage will make you stay excited about completing or achieving your goals.
Develop an effective action plan
Once you are clear in your headspace about your learning goals, you need to come up with an effective action plan to determine how you attain them. Many times people decide on their goals, but they never create the required action plan to meet them.
Get creative with your action plan and prepare a checklist of tasks you need to complete to achieve the learning goals you have set. Your action plan will include:
- A well-defined description of the learning goal that has to be achieved
- Tasks that require to be carried out to reach the learning goal
- Mention deadlines and milestones to get these tasks to be completed
- Resources required to carry out the tasks
- Measures to evaluate the entire progress
Planning this way about your learning goals will boost your productivity, keep you focused, help you prepare for the obstacles ahead, and keep you on track.
Prepare a timeline for your action plan
Set dates for tasks and try to stick to them. As part of your action plan, prepare a timeline that helps you in visualizing tasks, milestones, and deadlines to achieve your learning goal.
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Having a learning goal timeline will create a sense of urgency, which in turn can motivate you to stay on track, finish your tasks, and achieve your goals.
Make the move with Graphy
Now that you’ve prepared an action plan, it’s time for you to take measures for it. You didn’t go through all that extensive work to just forget about your learning goal. Every step you take should lead you to another until you finish your learning goal.
For instance, if you have set a learning goal to help every student of yours get at least the beginners’ achievement award in guitar learning by the end of 90 days since their enrolment date.
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Then, you should ensure that your students follow the required exercise for weeks without fail.
Your action plan would help you to timely check their progress, and suggest areas of improvement to achieve your goal within the scheduled time.
Our creators use Graphy to be a part of their students’ learning curve.
- They provide learners a boost by actively participating in the learning process.
- They make important course-wise announcements and share recent updates with learners.
- They promote a learning environment where learners can communicate directly and resolve their queries directly.
Assess and improve your progress
Consider timely evaluations of learning goals to measure your progress, in check with your schedule.
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Once you notice how close you are to ticking off your tasks to achieve your planned goals, you’ll feel more confident about pushing through to the end.
Similarly, upon evaluating, if you notice that you’re behind on schedule, then make necessary adjustments to your approach and continue achieving your learning goals.
Why are learning goals so important?
Learning goals helps in picking out specific knowledge and skills that one is can articulate with clear communication & comprehension by the end of the course. It includes benefits to both learners and educators.
Benefits to learners:
- Identify what attributes are required to complete the course
- Take ownership of their learning and progress
- Decide whether the course is the right fit for them
- Self-regulate their learning process
Benefits to educator/creator:
- Based on goals, facilitate selection of course content
- Transparency with learners on course expectations
- Design assessments and activities accordingly
- Clarity on the end goal
Teach successfully with Graphy
At Graphy, we allow you to be more effective at teaching by establishing a higher level of quality learning experiences for your learners.
With Graphy, you can:
- Create highly creative and engaging user-friendly course content without any hassle. Build traditional or multimedia course content, single or multiple-choice questions, quizzes, fill in the blanks, match the following, and more exclusively on web or mobile apps or both.
- Teach as many students as you may like. Exercise full control of the flow of your course content. Allow your students to access the whole course content at once, or just restrict the navigation piece by piece.
- Upsell, cross-sell, and create multiple landing pages in your sales funnel as a part of Graphy’s conversion technique. Offer discount coupons, promo codes, free trials, and more. You can also use the sales and revenue dashboard to check analytics and receive reports in real-time.
- Run polls, chat privately, ask questions publicly, allow interactions during live sessions, give assignments to your students, review and mark awards and customizable online course certificates as per their performance, and more.
- Allow both national and international payment gateways. Use it to add custom pricing across countries for every course in a customer’s specific currency.
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At the end of the day, when you achieve your learning goal, you’ll be the most successful and content online course creator.
Many successful creators worldwide have used Graphy‘s robust platform to build online courses that are student-centered and measurable. In other words, created courses on our platform are:
- Students will name each theory they learn and describe the key characteristics that differentiate each theory.
- Students will be able to identify examples of symbolism in their work/assessments.
Become a part of Graphy & fast-track your e-learning career today!
