Instructional Objectives Redux

In our system specifications one of the instructional objectives for photographic composition was: “Given a photograph, the learner will be able to crop it to emphasize the lines (leading, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or S-shaped) and make the photograph more effective.” I’m having second thoughts about this because cropping a photograph to improve the composition is not the same as taking well composed photographs. I’m wondering if I can find a measure of the learning outcome that reflects more closely what goes into composing photographs. This is one of the weaknesses of an online course that doesn’t have immediate feedback from an instructor. If it was possible to have learners submit example photos for instructor feedback, then the course would be much improved. However, it would also mean a significant increase in cost and one that would continue to escalate as the number of learners increased.