Alignment of Learning Objectives with Educational Strategies

If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? This is the case for nonprofits and associations when developing a holistic learning program for their members.

Learning programs should serve as roadmaps, helping link learning objectives with instructional strategies and learning assessments. Done well, they should take you to successful outcomes and ensure that learners, educators, and administrators are aligned against expectations.

The alignment of learning objectives helps you achieve what you’re in the business of education to do: ensure that members are learning and understanding what they need to know for success.

Achieving proper alignment is a challenging task requiring a collaborative, forward-thinking team committed to the institution’s vision. New technology in the form of learning management systems (LMS) can help streamline the needed collaboration.

Within a single LMS like Elevate, you can effectively manage across functions to work toward strategies for course delivery, course management, collaboration, and assessment, with capabilities for customization. Elevate ultimately helps professional educators provide what association members need to meet learning objectives, using a centralized digital environment.

Streamlined Course Management

Effective learning starts with a validated curriculum. But the material is only good if you can create, store, present, and share it when and where you need it. Your goal is to enable learners to access the curriculum content, in all its forms, at their convenience with their preferred technological interface. That could be done using existing technology, but what if you could access and manage all those tasks from a single sign-on and user interface? It would allow you to dramatically advance your efficiency, effectiveness, and learning experience.

Elevate includes all these functions, along with many others. A primary advantage involves centralizing educational resources like podcasts, videos, and articles. Educators can identify the items that best fit their objectives to build the kind of class that they want to teach. They’ll use that content to develop proper coursework from a single interface. They will also be able to schedule assignments, track progress, pursue follow-up where needed, and provide certifications that enable learners to market themselves.

The capabilities of your LMS help align learning objectives by simplifying and integrating capabilities to enable you to create, present, store, and manage content for successful learning. Messages are delivered as clearly and thoughtfully as possible so learners know exactly what’s expected of them.

Improved Motivation

Proper alignment of all phases of learning can pay off with improved learner motivation. When aligned, learners will clearly understand the expectations for success and how they’ll be evaluated. Clear communication about assessment provides a sense of direction and purpose, so learners know that they are traversing the steps to a result.

Elevate includes technological capabilities to easily create quizzes or exams right in the LMS. These instruments are beneficial after an event or online course, as a way of testing the retention of knowledge and the effectiveness of instruction. Through the LMS, you can make changes to your exam approach based on input from stakeholders or their results from the app.

Quizzes and exams aligned with course objectives and as part of an assessment strategy help promote improved engagement. When learners know that they’ll be expected to demonstrate what they have learned, it encourages them to connect more directly with the material.

Engagement and Communication

Continuous lifelong learning, both in person and online, thrives when learners connect with each other, their instructors, and the material. When objectives, material, and assessments are aligned, that collaboration takes on greater value and importance.

Elevate provides opportunities for learners to interact with each other and instructors through discussion forums, chats, and video conferencing. You can create and manage these communities from within the app.

Another feature for improved engagement is using surveys and evaluations to gain valuable feedback and track and distribute credits. Elevate offers an all-in-one evaluation and transcript tool to give learners a chance to provide input and generate validation of their learning success. These features provide the greatest utility when learning objectives, instructional strategies, and assessment tools are aligned.

Elevate, the leading LMS for associations, enables content-driven organizations to develop curricula, certifications, knowledge sharing, and social learning to help association members meet their learning objectives. Schedule a demo today to see how your association can use the platform to its advantage while delivering exceptional professional experiences.