Here’s why learning objectives matter (and how Gomo’s AI helps you generate them with ease)

You know better than anyone that when it comes to authoring eLearning content, you need a deep understanding of your learners' needs and the tools to design and distribute that content.

Designing with a set of learning objectives in mind helps ensure your courses engage learners and lead to measurable behavior change and knowledge retention.

Read on to explore the importance of crafting learning objectives and how generative AI can assist with this essential building block.

What is a learning objective—and what makes an effective one?

Learning objectives must clearly describe the intended learning outcomes—in other words, what learners are expected to know or do as a result of the training. Defining these specific and measurable statements tells your learners what knowledge and skills they can expect to gain from your content and helps them chart their progress.

Breaking down the end-goal into a series of objectives makes it easy to pace courses, prevents learners from being overwhelmed, and ensures assessments and quizzes are targeted and engaging.

Clarifying learning objectives gives designers a clear roadmap for assembling courses and materials. Starting with what people are expected to achieve makes it easier to structure content and choose assessments and quizzes that support the objective, ensuring all items are relevant. Plus, referencing a set of objectives can make it easier to check that courses meet the requirements when it comes to reviewing.

When creating learning objectives, think about what you want people to get out of your training and check that they include the following:

The learners

Who is your target audience? To keep objectives relevant, make sure the material applies to their roles and is suitable for their level of ability and prior knowledge.

The desired knowledge or skill

Objectives must be framed to enable observable change. Describe what the course will teach, avoiding hard-to-measure terms like "understand." Instead, use tangible, specific verbs, such as:

• Design (For example, design a basic web application)
• Analyze (For example, analyze financial data)
• List (For example, list the steps involved in project management)

The conditions

Describe what learners will be able to do and how they'll do it. Be specific about the settings in which learners will apply this knowledge or skill, what resources or materials they'll need, and how they'll demonstrate achievement.

Including all of these elements means that a learning objective might look something like:

By the end of this course, learners will be able to use a spreadsheet to:

• Visually group data using tables
• Create formulas to perform calculations
• Summarize data using pivot tables

How AI can enhance your eLearning creation

Your eLearning toolkit exists to simplify your content production processes and improve overall learning outcomes. As one CIPD report shows, L&D functions using learning technologies to take a strategic approach to clarifying objectives, designing learning, and measuring results are more likely to see strong performance from their efforts.

Notably, findings show they're:

• Twice as likely to say their efforts engage learners and support knowledge transfer
• Three times more likely to say they design content aligned with business and people priorities

When asked about their L&D tech, these respondents were more likely to say they use generative AI to support content delivery and collaborative processes.

However, experiencing AI’s full benefits means incorporating it meaningfully into your existing processes and technologies. A report compiled by Asana and Anthropic suggests that although most business professionals say AI is valuable for helping them summarize information and generate content, those who use generative AI to assist with creativity and collaboration are 33% more likely to experience productivity gains.

That's why Gomo's AI-enhanced course authoring capabilities direct your decisions, rather than dictate them.

How Gomo’s AI capabilities help you automatically generate learning objectives

Gomo has always been about supporting learning designers with quick and easy content creation and delivery options.

When you connect your OpenAI account with Gomo, you get access to additional functionality to supercharge your design workflow, augment existing processes, and cut out time-consuming tasks. With the ability to include AI-generated content, you open up new avenues for your learning designers to unlock speed and convenience without compromising on quality.

When you integrate your OpenAI account with Gomo, you'll get access to the existing AI add-ons and new features as they roll out. To find the text generation features, navigate to the course builder, and you'll find the following drag-and-drop assets:

• Introductions
• Objectives
• Conclusions

With one click, Gomo's AI assistant will generate an introduction, objective, or conclusion based on the content provided within a course topic.

The text within the asset is fully editable, making it a great starting point for you to refine. You can also use AI to regenerate these assets as content is updated, edited, and reviewed.