How Many Objectives Is Too Many?

Dear Becky:

I'm still on a “high” from all the great sessions I attended last week at the conference. I've been telling my co-workers that they must come with me next year. I'm working on ways to put all the wonderful information I gathered to use in our programs.

I attended your session on writing objectives. I really enjoyed learning how to write a good objective and it was interesting to learn about adding the degree of measurement. If the program is a three-hour program, is seven objectives too many? Is there a rule of thumb about the number of objectives you should have?

And can you preempt a list of objectives by saying, “After completing the program, the participant will be able to” then list the objectives? Or is adding the audience and condition to the beginning of each objective more effective?

Liz Everitt

Burlington, Ontario  

Seven is a lot for three hours, but if they are very specific, and if you feel the participants can really meet them, I would keep them. I would chunk the three hours into two modules and have three objectives for the first module and four for the second.

If the audience AND the condition are identical you can leave them off. When I put up my objectives, the condition and the audience are implied.

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