After joining General Assembly, I realized I’d not only entered the tech industry, I’d also entered the education industry. And so far, I’ve learned a TON about the world of teachers and learning. For all the educators out there this post is going to seem really obvious. But for all of you that are like me, without any formal training as a teacher before now, here is one small tip from the fascinating world of teaching and education I’ve entered at GA: find out what a learning objective is and use it in your everyday life to frame goals.

In the education world, a learning objective is a goal framed in a special way: rather than saying “the goal of today is to learn about HTML“, the learning objective for the lesson would be delivered as: “Students can use HTML tags to structure content into a header, body, and footer on a web page.”

A learning objective captures specifically what a learner should be able to exhibit/do that they could not exhibit or do before the learned the new material.  To get more specific, a learning objective is a specific statement describing what someone can do in measurable terms. It involves a lot of backward planning – starting at the end and designing your lesson or meeting backward so every objective is hit upon.

If you’ve ever made an OKR (Objective and Key Results) you know it’s another way to make your goals more specific and measurable. OKRs typically have a longer term focus than learning objectives which are normally achieved in a shorter time frame.

Structuring goals for yourself or even a group at work meetings as “learning objectives” can really push efficiency forward.

Being at an education company has branded this into me: goals and objectives are very different! Use objectives. Use specific framing.