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Day 7 / 60Week 1 · Introduction to Instructional DesignLesson

Learning objectives

Learning goal

Write performance-based objectives with condition, behaviour and criterion.

Estimated time

30 minutes · self-paced

Warm-up

Rewrite 'learn about phishing' so a manager could observe it.

Main lesson

The ABCD / CBC pattern

Condition + observable behaviour + criterion. Audience is implied. If you cannot see it happen, it is not an objective.

  • Condition — 'Given a suspicious email…'
  • Behaviour — '…identify the three phishing signals…'
  • Criterion — '…and report it within 5 minutes.'

Terminal vs enabling

diagram

One terminal objective per module (the real job task); a few enabling objectives that build up to it.

Banned words

example

Understand, know, be aware of, appreciate, be familiar with. They hide the actual behaviour.

Examples from practice

  • Given the CRM, log a completed call with outcome codes in under 60 seconds.

Interactive quiz

Which is a well-formed objective?
How many terminal objectives should a focused module have?

Reflection

Which of your own past goals were really 'understand' goals in disguise?

Daily challenge

Write 3 objectives for a topic you already know well.

Portfolio task

Start the Week 1 mini project file: 'Learning objectives for a simple course'.

AI design tools

Ten assistants for this lesson

AI Mentor

Instructional design questions only

Hi! I'm your ID Mentor. Ask me anything about learning objectives — or instructional design in general.