Student learning outcomes
lCourse objective:
l“To become familiar with the major theories of language development and some of the major debates in field.”
l
lRelated student learning outcomes:
lDescribe the underlying assumptions and aims of 3 current theories of child language acquisition. (Comprehension)
lCompare and contrast different theories of child language acquisition.  (Analysis)
So, let’s return to my initial, vague course objective.

Using Bloom’s taxonomy, I sat down and operationalized the course objective. And I found when I did that, that I actually had several learning objectives. I wanted the students to be familiar with the basic aspects of the theories, but I also wanted them to be able to compare and contrast them.

This helped me, and my students, understand what I meant in my course objectives.

Thus, unpacking my course objectives into something more concrete not only helped me assess these, but it helped me see that I had several goals, at several different levels of cognition.