Learning objectives are used to challenge a learner to develop proficiency to a specific level, and to maintain that level from that moment. This ensures that a participant always has the right knowledge, awareness and skills to perform on the job, or to be prepared to pass an exam. Learning objectives add an important gamification element to your learning courses. People are challenged to realize a proficiency before a target date. Competences decline if not maintained, so the learning objectives feature also challenges people to beat the forgetting curve and to keep their competencies top-of-mind. Learning objectives turn ad hoc training events into continuous learning experiences.
2 Types of learning objectives can be set:
- One-off learning objectives:
challenge learners to develop proficiency on a drill or course before a specific deadline. See the below image. A one-off objective manages the proficiency of the learner on the drill or course between the study start date and the review date.
- Permanent learning objectives:
challenge learners to maintain their proficiency at a high level after having realized the Minimum Proficiency at the Review Date. The permanent learning objective manages the proficiency between the study start date till the moment that the learner is disconnected from the course or that the learning objective is stopped by the organization. So this includes the period before ánd after the review date.
Set learning objectives
Learning targets can be set from the overview screen of the group:
- Go to the group via the menu screen.
- Select one or more drills via the check box next to the name and image of the drill.
- You now see that the option 'define learning objective' appears under actions.
- Go to the group via the menu screen.
- Click on learning objectives.
- Now add the drills by searching for them and adding them.
Read below what you need to fill in the details when setting a learning objective:
Choose here whether it is going to be a permanent or a one-off learning goal:
1. One-off learning objectives: challenge learners to develop proficiency on a drill or course before a specific deadline.
2. Permanent learning objectives: challenge learners to maintain their proficiency at a high level after having realized the one-of objective.
- When creating a drill or a course that contains only need-to-know information, meaning all learning elements are essential for the learner, we recommend setting the Minimum Proficiency at 100%. This will encourage the participants to complete the entire drill or course, preventing any omissions in their knowledge, awareness or skills. The minimum profeciency of 100% is also important for students, as lacking any knowledge due to unfinished drill may lead to the student failing a test. A proficiency of 100% shows that people are expert on the topic for which you have invited them to learn, anchor and retain via a drill.
Attention! Always set a Minimum on the learning objective. Failing to set a declining minimum will cause the status of the learning objective to state NOT MET, when a user has realized a proficiency of 100% and the proficiency has decreased prior to the Review Date. Please always set a Decreasing Minimum (eg 70%) both for one-time and permanent learning objective.
- When creating a drill or a course that contains similar learning elements on the same topic, it is then OK to set the Minimum Proficiency at a lower value (eg 80%). For example, a drill that only has questions on ’multiplications up to 10’ and the learner has shown to be competent on 80% of the drill, the probability here is high that the learner is also proficient on the remaining 20% of the drill. In this case a lower Minimum Proficiency value will not have a negative impact on the job performance or test results if the learner does not master the drill or course up to a 100%.
If not maintained, knowledge, awareness and skills will decline. The Drillster app calculates the decline of proficiency level, if not maintained (the forgetting curve). It is impossible to always maintain a proficiency of 100%, since the forgetting curve will start having an impact shortly after the practicing stops. Therefore, allow for a reasonable time for the proficiency to decrease before a user is reminded to brush up on their knowledge.
The decreasing minimum is the percentage of proficiency that the proficiency can fall back to before the learner is reminded to brush up on the proficiency. This can be any value, but we recommend never to use a value below 60%.
In the early 1960s, Paul Pimsleur (an applied linguistics scholar) found that repetition is most effective when there is still at least a 60% chance of recall of the material. As soon as the chance of correct retention of previously learned material has dropped below 60%, memorizing the material will take the same time and effort as the first time it was learned.
So in order to make learning as effective as possible for your participants and to ensure that they have the right knowledge and skills to perform on the job or to pass an exam, then never use a decreasing minimum of less than 60%.
When the learning objective is set to 100%, then the falling minimum could be, for example 70%. If the proficiency on a drill or course of an individual participant drops below the value of the declining minimum (in this example 70%), the system will report that the learning objective is no longer met. A notification can be sent to the learner inviting him to brush up on the knowledge and bring it back to the value of the Minimum Proficiency.
- Fixed for all group members.
The Study Start Date and the Review Date will be the same for each and every member of a group. We recommend using this parameter if no additional members are added to the group after the Study Start Date. If existing users have for example 4 weeks to meet the learning challenge, and a new member would be added to the group 2 weeks after the Study Start Date, then this additional user would only have 2 weeks to realize the learning objective. If all members need to realize a specific % on the Review Date because of an exam or because of specific tasks they have to perform for their job, then a learning objective that is ‘Fixed for all group members’ is the ideal option to choose.
- Per individual group member.
This setting enables you to give each group member to have a fixed amount of time to realize the learning objective. The value can be a number of days, weeks or months. If you choose for example ‘1 month’ and the Minimum Proficiency is set at 100%, then each group member will get 1 month to go realize 100% proficiency on the drill or course. All users that are already members of the group will have 1 month from the moment that the learning objective is created. Future group members will have 1 month to go from 0% to 100% from the moment that they are added to the group.
So an evaluation that is individual per group member has an individual Review Date that is dependent on the moment that the member was added to the group.
All notifications and status reporting that was explained in the previous sections, also apply to the case where an objective per individual group member is set.
Attention! To activate the evaluation per individual group member, you have to select the field ‘relative to join date’.
If your organization uses the Drillster event notification API, you have to select the ‘set through API integration’ option. This means that the activation of the evaluation per individual group member is sent via an API call from the organization system (LMS, HRM, Compliance system, etc.) to the Drillster system.
Notification
Based on the set learning objective evaluation status, the user could receive a notification. Notifications are only sent if the following parameters are checked for the learning objective:
Drillster also enables notifications to be sent to the platform in which the Drillster application has been integrated (LMS, HRM, compliance, communication, or other system). The Drillster event notification API has to be implemented to use this feature. Please contact support@drillster.com for more information.
The participants will be notified with this reminder when they no longer meet the learning objective or when Drillster has calculated that the learning objective is not going to be achieved.
If you want to know more about the difference in notifications between a one-off learning objective and a permanent objective, please click here.
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