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Home >> For Students >> Co-op and Internships >> Prospective Co-op/Internship Students >> Tips for Success >> SMART Learning Objectives
SMART Learning Objectives To be useful, learning objectives should be SMART: Specific Learning objectives focus your learning on specific areas each semester and can help you to maximize your time spent in this co-op assignment. Further, discussing your learning goals with your supervisor helps to ensure that you will spend your time productively during the term and that all parties involved are aware of the gains you are trying to achieve.
What are learning objectives? Learning objectives can fall into the following categories:
1. Knowledge or Skills Acquisition: Knowledge or skills you hope to acquire on the job such as learning to use appropriate procedures, equipment, or methods.
2. Personal/Professional: Skills you hope to apply or cultivate such as self-confidence, interpersonal skills, working effectively with others, professional meeting/email/telephone etiquette, networking, written communication, relationships with supervisors, time management, organization, decision making, etc.
3. Career Knowledge: Gaining new information regarding the company, the industry, or job duties.
4. Other: Depending on the job, there may be additional categories of learning objectives. Consider your field of choice and the critical knowledge/skills you would like to obtain.
Steps to writing learning objectives For each objective, answer the following three questions:
1. What do you want to accomplish?
2. How are you going to accomplish it? (What steps will you take to accomplish your objective? What activities will you do? How will you acquire the learning? Under what conditions will the learning occur?)
3. How you will measure your objective? (What evidence will you have to demonstrate that learning has taken place? What criteria will be used to evaluate your evidence? Who will do the evaluation?)
SMART learning objectives In each case the same objective is stated in two different ways. In the "VAGUE" description, the objective is either too general or not sufficiently measurable. In the "SPECIFIC" example, the same objective has been stated SMARTly (in a manner that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-focused, and Time-focused).
Adapted from "Developing Effective Learning Objectives." Kansas State University Career and Employment Services. |
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