Hi Timothy: Course objectives are a form of pretesting - that is, they describe to a student what they should learn. But the evaluation of what they know about it at beginning is quite subjective and unmeasured (except in the mind of the student). Therefore, by pretesting, both the student and teacher get a perspective about where the level of fore knowledge on the topic exists. Also, based on test results, the teacher can modify, "tweak", or consider alterations to their lesson plans knowing student may need more attention in certain areas more than others. Regards, Barry