Why Learning Objectives Matter

The value of well crafted learning objectives is that they engage people in content of a conference. This is a powerful way to leave people feeling that the event was valuable. Too many events leave this to chance. Start by asking some questions that lead to ideas for the content of the event.

• What do people need to learn to be more successful next year?
• What do you want people to achieve or create at the event?
• What challenges will they face next year?
• How do you want to involve people in the event?
• How can the conference provide the insights, contacts or opportunities that add to the bottom line of the participants?

The answer to these questions can be used to shape learning objectives for your conference. Three is likely enough. While this sounds very obvious, many events do not list any objectives for their events. I know as a speaker looking to develop proposals or presentations I have searched websites and asked about the learning objectives for the event. Often there is nothing specific to the event.

I found one research project from MPI (Meeting Professionals International) useful for designing conferences (If you want a copy, email me and I send this to you). It made these recommendations to make meetings more effective:

1. Meetings should be planned around clearly identified problems or issues with specific, desired outcomes. These outcomes should dictate the form and process of meetings.
2. Meetings should be viewed as learning experiences designed to change the behavior of attendees.
3. The agenda, pace of the meeting, amount of content, delivery methods, and degree of relevance are critical factors that must be carefully planned.

When you identify the problems or challenges, and the behaviors that could be changed, you can use these ideas to create your general learning objectives.

It is highly useful to modify these to create three different versions to appeal to the audience you must address. These are:

1. For the CEO or other executives: you can edit these objectives to focus on the investment being made by the business or association in a format that makes sense to executives.
2. For your marketing tools: you can edit the words for websites or brochures. This will help potential participants see value in attending your event.
3. For speakers and presenters - you can edit your objectives to provide a focus for speakers when they design presentations for your specific event.

Here is a sample of objectives that you can model.

Association objectives may include:

• Improving membership retention through greater involvement with association services.
• Developing personal skills perhaps focusing one sub-sector of the overall membership.
• Creating business development opportunities for members through forums and related strategies for collaboration.
• Improved membership revenues by identifying more and newer needs of members.

Regardless, every association must focus on using conferences to enhance the long term value of membership. Events are the ideal venue to seek insight and feedback on services and programs. These can be the seeds of future innovations.

Company objectives may include:

• Improving staff communication, satisfaction and retention.
• Enticing more staff involvement in various programs (ranging from employee suggestions and fitness to coaching and safety).
• Creating a greater working understanding of the vision and values of the organization.
• Improving sales for a range of services and products, or something quite specific.
• Reducing injuries and quality costs by seeking more staff support and buy-in to the organization's safety policies and procedures.
• Developing a greater capacity to innovate when solving customer service problems.

It will be very difficult to use a model for measuring the value of the event if we do not first expand our understanding of why we are hosting or commissioning a conference. A well developed learning strategy can help.

Use Objectives to brief your Speakers!
The effort invested to create learning objectives will be rewarded when your speakers focus their proposals or presentations on the specific issues you define.

One of the best briefings comes from my experience in New Zealand (See case study 3A). You can read the current briefing for its 2007 event. I was a key note speaker at this conference. Its theme is innovation@work. You can the well developed website at www.hrinz.org.nz

Well defined learning objectives also set the platform for more accountability. The ability to measure the results of a conference all depend on the objectives that it was designed to achieve.

Questions for conference designers

1. How do you want people to participate in your conference? For example, they can sit and listen or they can help to solve an industry problem.
2. What are the specific issues or challenges facing your participants that the conference should address?
3. Can you use these specific issues to create content that engages people and prompts them to act on ideas after the event?

I discuss this more fully in the Seven Rules book under Rules 1, 3 and 4.