Spring 2026: Improving Learning Objective Alignment in Coreq College Algebra - What to do to make things more transparent for students.

This term I am making two changes to my college algebra course, and the second is to have better alignment of course activities and student-facing directions of the weekly learning objectives. This is informed by my attempts at standards based learning, that I've ultimately backed off of. In short the grading methods got complicated quickly, which left students unsure of their grade and where they were in the course. I am still holding out for another chance at using standards for grades, and am looking for ways to do that this conference season. If you find some interesting ones, let me know. 

Best practices in teaching tell us that learning objectives should be clear to students, and all parts of the learning process should align to that learning objective. 

• There should be some framing of the learning objective, why it is important, how it connects to other areas of the course or course of study. I have this in a Weekly Objective page that introduces the week and the learning objectives for that week.  
• There should be some introductory activity exposing students to the content of the learning objective. I use Note-Taking Assignments to have students take notes on the textbook before class, using it as an opportunity for them to take notes in a few different methods throughout the term to figure out what works for them. 
• There should be some kind of instruction of the learning objective. My in-class active learning activities focus on this. 
• There should be some place students can practice the learning objective in a formative way. Our online homework system Knewton and the exercises in the textbook form this practice for my students. 
• There should be a way to assess if students have learned the associated knowledge, skills, and abilities found in the learning objectives.

These learning objectives really provide clarity to students and educators of what the real goals and stakes are in a course. 

I have all of these course activities aligned to these learning objectives, yet I don't have consistent student-facing messaging around how these activities support their learning. To address this I have started doing the following;

• Including the learning objectives in the daily agenda. This is a sheet with student group and role assignments, a list of what we'll be doing today, student process goals, my faculty goals, feedback from students from last class, and how many students completed the pre-class assignments. 
• Review activities to ensure they match the learning objective, and find places to ask students if the questions in the activity address the learning objectives in the daily agenda.
• Connecting where pre-class assignments support the learning objective in the activity. This requires some level of review of both the pre-class assignment, and the activity, which I have to do anyway. 
• For assessments I allow students to retake two questions from the assessment, if they complete an Assessment Reflection Form. I've adjusted the form to ask students which learning objective the questions they want to retake are from. 

These are just a few ways I am trying to make learning objectives meaningful to students, showing how they touch various parts of the course. 

What do you do to ensure students understand the learning objectives in your course? Is it not that important, or something you repeat regularly? I'd love to learn more about what others do, selfishly sure to learn from their experience, but also how this might change in different disciplines to support my colleagues in other departments.