Need help with your academic goals? Use a goal attainment scale 🎯

“I’m going to do better this school year!”

How many times have you told yourself this? And how many times did it actually end up happening?

Having goals is important. But having a plan is what will help you actually accomplish your goals.

Try using a goal attainment scale to tackle your academic goals with intention and purpose!

It's a goal-setting technique that involves ranking your progress based on clearly defined criteria. Think of it as a rubric for your personal goals!

Rather than looking at goal attainment as a yes or no question, let the numbers speak for themselves to highlight your progress.

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals. Good goals should be: 

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Relevant

• Time-Bound

To hear an audio description of the image above, click play on the audio player below:

Using a goal attainment scale gives your SMART goals an extra boost because they’re used as a tool for measuring and tracking your progress in achieving those goals.

Selecting 2-3 education-related goals at a time will allow you to really focus on what’s most important to you. Use this template to create your SMART goals.

Before deciding where you want to go, it’s important to figure out where you are now. Gather important data related to your chosen goals, such as past grades in that subject or class or estimating how much time you spent doing certain tasks (e.g., studying for a test).

Examples

Jake

• currently has a 60% average in his math class

• does okay on tests, but rarely does the weekly assignments

• on average, submits about one assignment every 3 weeks

Nicole

• often distracted by her phone when she needs to study

• typically on her phone an average of 6 hours a day (based on her phone's screentime tracker)

• spends an average of 40 minutes on her phone during her 2-hour study sessions

A goal attainment scale is usually a 5-point scale, ranging from -2 to +2:

• -2 = Achieved much less than the expected goal

• -1 = Achieved less the expected goal (this is usually your baseline)

• 0 = Achieved the goal

• +1 = Achieved more than the expected goal

• +2 = Achieved much more than the expected goal

Use your baseline behavior and SMART goals to clearly define measurable criteria for each of the points on your goal attainment scale.

Nicole's Goal Attainment Scale

Let's take a closer look at Nicole from the example above.

She notices that she’s often distracted by her phone when she needs to study. She checks her phone for data on her screentime and activity, and discovers that she averages 40 minutes on her phone during a 2-hour study session.

Nicole creates the following goal attainment scale to use this month:

• -2 = Spends more than 45 minutes on her phone per 2-hour study session.

• - 1 = Spends 31-45 minutes on her phone per 2-hour study session.  

• 0 = Spends 21-30 minutes on her phone per 2-hour study session. 

• +1 = Spends 11-20 minutes on her phone per 2-hour study session. 

• +2 = Spends 0-10 minutes on her phone per 2-hour study session.

Using her goal attainment scale, Nicole can now track how well she is doing at minimizing her screentime during study sessions.

Part of intentional goal-setting and goal-tracking is choosing regular times or intervals for monitoring your progress and using your goal attainment scale. Depending on your SMART goal, this interval can vary (e.g., once a week, at the end of every study session, etc.).

Regular check-ins are important for determining if you are on track (0), behind in (-1 or -2), or ahead of (+1 or +2) your path to successfully achieving the goal.

Let's take a look back at the example of Nicole’s goal of minimizing her screentime during study sessions. Rather than tracking how well she met this goal at the end of every week, it would be easiest to simply rank herself at the end of every 2-hour study session so that this data doesn’t get lost or forgotten.

On top of regular check-ins, set a time to examine your overall progress in your given timeline.

Reflect on your scores. You can calculate an average score for each of your goals and/or look for patterns in your data. Use this information to adjust your goals accordingly.

Nicole's Progress

Nicole records her goal attainment scale scores for every 2-hour study session this month.

• Feb 1: -2

• Feb 7: -1

• Feb 10: 0

• Feb 12: 0

• Feb 18: +1

• Feb 23: +1

A goal attainment scale is the key to using data to make that success happen!

Having clearly defined goals is the first step to achieving your academic dreams.