If you are a guerrilla scholar, that means that you assume responsibility for what you learn and how you learn it. Most self-learners do this by just grabbing whatever they can find on a subject and consuming it, and there is definitely a time and a place for that kind of joyous educational orgy. But eventually you need to settle down and decide just what you are going to learn, and how your growing expertise will manifest itself. We’ve discused establishing expertise elsewhere, but this post is more about how education professionals define learning objectives when they design courses.

Learning objectives for a course must share one vital factor: they must be measurable. To list an objective such as, “Learn about the French Revolution” tells you very little. The objective says nothing about how you will be able to show that you learned or understand the French Revolution or whatever else you are talking about.

A better example would be some objectives like these:

• Explain the social forces that allowed the French Revolution to take place
• List some of the main personalities of the Revolution and describe the role they played
• Describe those changes brought about by the Revolution that persist to this day

Notice the verbs used in these objectives: explain, list, describe. If someone can do these things, one can assume that they have met the objectives set forth.

Now this may seem like pedantic nit-picking, but this is a very important aspect of educational psychology. Back around 1956 a cognitive psychologist named Benjamin Bloom came up with a set of nomenclatures to describe six different levels of cognitive activity (from lowest to highest): Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation. Bloom then listed different kinds of activities associated with each level. For instance, “Knowledge” is associated with activities like “arrange”, “define”, “label”, “list”, “memorize”, “name”, “recognize”, “recall”, etc. At the other end of the continuum, “Evaluate” is associated with activities such as “appraise”, “argue”, “assess”, “compare”, “defend”, “predict”, “rate”, “evaluate”, and so on. To see more complete lists of the words used by all six levels defined in Bloom’s Taxonomy, just Google “Bloom’s Taxonomy”.

What does this have to do with your learning objectives? Pretty much everything. When you write down your learning objectives (you are writing them down, right? Right?) you can more precisely define not just what you want to learn, but at what level you are going to learn it. Do you want to be able to list all of Shakespeare’s plays, or analyze them and derive your own original insights? Both objectives bring their own satisfaction. Which do you want? Or do you want something in between?

It’s worth taking some time to get to know this system for describing learning activities. If you can write your own goals and objectives with greater precision, you will enjoy greater clarity as you plot your path to those objectives. You will also have a greater chance of success, or at least of knowing when you’ve reached your goals.