Yesterday during my educational technology for teachers class my students wanted to use the word ‘Understand’ in their learning objectives. I just cringed. I asked them what understand meant? I asked how you would teach and assess a learning objective such as: Students will understand the state of north carolina? Each student had a very different idea of what understand meant and so did each taxonomy they were using. I asked how reliable that would be? I guess it would be ok if everyone had the same operational definition but then really the term would mean other action verbs so why not just use them in the first place?
When writing objectives make the objective clear and concise. Use action verbs that describe what is to be done for instance:
identify
distinguish
compare and contrast
describe
evaluate
list
DO NOT USE VAGUE TERMS. I have a list of good and bad verbs that I will post soon.