Why Writing Learning Objectives is a Key for Successful Group Education
- Rebecca Snow, MS, CNS, LDN, AHG
- Nov 11
- 3 min read
Community education is a win-win-win. It is often a low-cost way for folks to learn helpful information and tools for their own health journey. It is a great way for nutritionists, like you, to get the word out about who you are, what you do, and who you help! You can build KNOW, LIKE, and TRUST.
Community education can take many forms. Here are some of my favorite examples:
Get your neighbors together for a cooking demo to address a common concern like weight, energy, sleep, or mood.
Present at your kid’s school for parents or kids
Connect with your local gym to do some weight or fitness-related classes
Connect with local senior centers to help elders learn the best nutritional practices for their needs as they age.
Talk to your church, synagogue, or mosque about a community lecture or workshop
The options are endless, really, they are!
There are a few mistakes new nutrition practitioners and educators make when they design community education.
Trying to ram too much content into an hour. I am definitely guilty of this and still do it to my interns sometimes when I lecture.
Not utilizing community education as an opportunity to promote one business or clinical practice. There are so many ways to do this indirectly and directly. Check out this post on how to leverage community programming to promote yourself
Approaching community education from a teacher-centered perspective instead of a learner-centered perspective. What you want to teach may not align with what folks want to learn.
This is the crux of this post. There is a mismatch between “expert-centered” and “learner-centered” teaching.
Most nutritionists are on a mission to educate the community and transform people’s lives. We are passionate about food as healing, and we want to help people. But when we design education from our passion and interests, we may not be considering what learners want and need… we can miss the mark.
A “teacher-centered” approach focuses on what the lecturer wants to present. The teacher can have blind spots and forget what it is like to NOT know something.
The learner-centered approach starts from the learner’s perspective. To get into the learner mindset. You can start by asking these questions…
What are the learner’s goals?
What are their pain points?
What problems do they need to solve?
The Solution
Objective-based course design is the solution. This is also called backward design or outcome-based education. Designing a course backwards helps you meet the needs of the learner.
Start by identifying the outcomes you want to achieve.
What do you want the learner to say, know, or do as a result of this workshop or lecture series?
Then you design the course content to meet these outcomes.
It is helpful to become familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s taxonomy organizes learning objectives in order of cognitive complexity. The higher you go up on the ladder, the more complex thinking skills are required. At the bottom of the ladder is knowledge recall. At the top of the ladder is creating new content.
Adult learners tend to learn more through application and critical thinking, so designing objectives that move up the ladder is encouraged.
How to Write a Learning Objective
You are teaching a group of breastfeeding mothers the keys to nutrition to support breastfeeding.
Your first step is to ask these three questions and learn about your audience.
What are their goals? They want to breastfeed. They want to ensure proper nutrition for themselves and their babies. They want to improve milk production.
What are their pain points? They are busy. They have little time for food prep. They may be sleep-deprived. They may have issues like mastitis, stress, or poor milk production.
What problem do you need to solve? You need to help these folks problem-solve how to nourish themselves and their babies while being sleep-deprived and having limited time to prep food.
If you came to this talk with all the technical pieces of nutrition breastfeeding, you would have missed the mark. This group may need more help with practical application than knowledge.
Now that you know the problem clearly, it is easier to write learning objectives. Here are a few examples:
As a result of this workshop, participants will
Understand how nutrition needs change during breastfeeding
Analyze 10 common meals for health and balance
Design 3 easy home-prepared meals they can make at home to support breastfeeding, both mom's and infant's health
These objectives are measurable and practical. They will require some interactive and small group activities in addition to the lecture.
Learner-centered course design requires the teacher to understand their students better. To understand their goals, challenges, and desired outcomes. Building learning objectives first, the content easily comes together. Educators can ensure their teaching aligns with what learners actually want and need to learn.
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