Successful businesses and managers understand the importance of setting clear goals and targets in business. Having clear goals makes it easier for employees to focus on
those goals and it makes it easier to measure success.
Having clearly defined learning goals is just as important to trainees in a training program. Without a clear goal, it's difficult to check progress and it's difficult to measure whether the training has been successful or not.
"I want my team to improve their spoken English."
This isn't a clearly defined learning goal. It will be very difficult to design and deliver a language training program with this goal. It will be difficult to measure progress with such a general learning objective. It means that this training program may lead to disappointment.
"I want my team to learn how to deal with questions on a conference call."
This is a clearly defined learning goal. It's possible to create learning content to reach this objective because this is a S-M-A-R-T goal [Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely]. This learning objective allows us to measure each trainee on his/her ability to successfully deal with questions on a conference call.
Having clearly defined learning goals is the first step in designing and creating a successful training course that demonstrates measurable results.
