The ABCD’s of Writing Learning Objectives

The ABCD’s of Writing Learning Objectives

All training begins with the end in mind.  In the fire and emergency service, training frequently revolves around the performance of tasks and even our knowledge-type training frequently manifests in performance metrics.  To define the end state of training, trainers and content developers assemble learning objectives.  Terminal Learning Objectives identify what the learner should know or do at the end of the learning period.  Generally, there is only one learning objective for each learning block.  Enabling Objectives support the terminal objectives and serve as steps towards reaching the terminal objective.  Enabling Objectives are then supported by learning tasks. 

Whether writing terminal or enabling objectives, the ABCD format (Audience, Behavior, Condition, Degree) format, will help guide you in the process.  Audience describes who is doing the learning, Behavior describes what you want them to do, Condition lists the circumstances, and Degree describes how successful they should be in order to demonstrate mastery.  For example:

At the conclusion of the training unit (Condition), the trainee (Audience) will demonstrate placing a 24’ ground ladder to a second story window for rescue (Behavior) in accordance with department guidelines (Degree).

Note that the Behavior involves an action word (verb).  There are several types of taxonomies for defining the types of verbs to use and when, with Blooms being one of the most common.  In a future blog, we will discuss Bloom’s Taxonomy and other verb lists and when to apply them and the domains of learning (cognitive, psychomotor, and affective) and how they apply to training and job performance.