Objectives are needed before appropriate assessment tools and procedures can be selected or designed. At a minimum, objectives should describe student behaviors and products that faculty would accept as evidence that the learning outcomes were achieved. Goal statements are helpful, but are sometimes too general, broad, or vague for developing specific assessment tools. Information about how objectives are linked to goals is useful when reporting and using assessment results. Cognitive objectives are descriptions of thinking skills.
Affective objectives refer to attitudinal, personal, and social dimensions of outcomes.
Skills are the means by which knowledge is acquired. Subject matter objectives are a subset of cognitive objectives that are specific to knowledge of subject matter. Often they are. However, they may need to be put into written form, revised, or updated. Many instructional decisions are made informally and then communicate orally.