How to Write Learning Objectives

The Internship Learning Agreement (ILA) requires you to create learning objectives (LOs) for your internship. The purpose of LOs is to identify the things you will learn and accomplish which are related to your field of study. For this reason, it is important that LOs are specific, achievable, and exhaustive (i.e., covers everything you intend/want to learn).

If you submit an ILA without specific and achievable LOs, it will be returned to you. The steps involved in writing appropriate LOs are as follows:

1. Determine (with your site supervisor) what knowledge and skills you will learn and accomplish

2. To write your LOs, start with a phrase such as, “I will be able to”; “I will”; or “Upon successful completion of the internship, I will”

3. Connect step 2 with an action verb. Select an action verb that can be observed and measured. For a list of action verbs, see Verbs for Learning Outcomes

4. After writing a learning objective, you should list the duties, responsibilities, and activities you will perform to meet that objective

For Example:

Upon successful completion of the internship, I will be able to:

Learning Objective: Execute a search warrant.

Duties, responsibilities, and activities for meeting objective:

• Describe what is a search warrant

• Identify instances when search warrants are used

• Explain how a search warrant is obtained

• Observe the execution of a search warrant

• Plan the execution of a search warrant