8 Questions That Help Define Learning Objectives

Training is part of business, but training is not an objective. Training is a means to an end, with the end being the objective.

This is important to get right at the outset of an e-learning development initiative as it is common for training to be viewed as the objective of the initiative. For example, in answer to the question “what do you want to achieve”, the response is often “we want to develop an e-learning training course on topic X-Y-Z”.

However, developing the training course should not be the objective. The training course is the means by which you will achieve the objective. Therefore, it is important the objective is understood at the outset.

Answering the following eight questions will help to clearly define the learning objectives of your training initiative.

What Are the Needs of the Business or Challenges that Need to Be Overcome?

The starting point for any e-learning development project is to focus on the business. Business needs could be improving productivity or reducing error rates, for example. Improving customer service quality scores or sales closing rates are other examples.

Challenges can be just as varied, with examples including maintaining compliance, adapting to changing market conditions, or protecting the company from fraud.

Understanding the problem, issue, or business need you want to address is an essential first step.

What Will Happen If You Do Nothing?

What are the consequences of doing nothing in relation to the identified challenges or business needs? What are the risks and what are the benefits? Answering these questions will help clarify that a training course is needed and the level of importance to the business.

Can the Business Needs Be Addressed in One Step?

This question is mostly about deciding whether a training course is enough to deliver on the requirements of the business. You might need multiple training courses, for example, to build up skill levels over time. Additional material might also be needed or new procedures. You might even need to recruit new employees as well as training your existing team.

Who Is the Target Audience?

What departments do the target audience work in and what are their roles? What is their current level of knowledge or ability? Will the audience find the topic of the training course new or is it an area they are already familiar with? What is their general attitude to training, i.e., are they typically resistant or receptive to training initiatives? Are there any concerns the audience is likely to have about the business objectives you are trying to achieve? Similarly, will there be concerns about the training specifically?

What Behavioural Changes or Performance Improvements Are Required?

This question aims to answer how the business requirements will be achieved. How do you want employees to apply the new skills and knowledge learned in the training course in their day-to-day job roles?

This could be safely using a piece of equipment, for example, or effectively utilising a new software application. It could also be following a new procedure or applying best practices to a task.

How Will Behavioural Changes or Performance Improvements Be Assessed?

What business metrics will be used to confirm the required behavioural changes or performance improvements have been achieved? What observational methods will be used and who will be responsible for the observations? Are there any challenges with the assessment methods that need to be overcome? Availability of data or subjectivity of observations are two examples.

What Are the Measurements of Success?

It is also important to define success. Often the answer to this question will be directly tied to the previous question. For example, a metric you might use to measure the success of onboarding training is retention rates during the initial employment period. The measurement of success could be improving current retention rates by 10 percent.

What Are the Barriers to Success?

You should also look at the potential barriers to success. This could be connected to the e-learning development project. The availability of subject matter experts to optimise the content is one example, or the project being completed late.

However, there are other factors that could also present barriers to success. Trained staff leaving the company and taking their new skills and knowledge with them is one example. Another example is problems with implementing new technologies or equipment that prevent employees from applying their training.

Understanding the potential barriers early in the process gives you the opportunity to mitigate their impact.

Focus on Business Outcomes

It is important to remember that, in general, managers don’t care about training. Business leaders don’t care about training. They value training and they think training is important, but what they really care about is the outcome they are trying to achieve.

Also, it doesn’t matter how good the training is, if it doesn’t deliver a business outcome, it will be viewed as a failure.

As a result, always focus on business outcomes and use them to define learning objectives. This will set your training initiative on the path to success.