Learning More about Behavioral Objectives
Behavioral objectives need to be clear, explicit, detailed, and jargon-free so that everyone can understand where you're headed on your learning journey and how you're going to get there.
As you'll learn in the text, there are three basic parts to a learning objective -- the specific behavior, the conditions under which that behavior is to be performed, and the standard that the performance must meet. Some of you may feel that this is a very behavioral approach, and indeed it is. Later in the semester we'll be doing more critiquing of the approach itself and looking at some alternatives to this model. However, for now, let's stick to this way of doing it so that we can have a minimum standard to compare alternatives to.
The behavior needs to be very specific. As we discussed earlier, it's imperative that the behavior not simply say that the learner will "know" something. That's not specific enough, and you may not have a clear way to measure it, or a sense of what conditions might be necessary to display success. Therefore, it is important to take some time to learn about verbs that can be used to formulate behavioral objectives. Some of the many possibilities, along with descriptions, are found at: http://www.adprima.com/verbs.htm. Check out this list for some ideas of how to describe what you want people to learn with more specificity than you may have had in the past.
Once you have a clear sense of what you want your learners to do, the rest usually follows pretty easily. You can imagine someone doing the learning; then think of what conditions, materials, etc. would be necessary for them to demonstrate what they've learned; and finally how you would know that they "got it."
Read and review Chapter 3, Writing Objectives, in the Dick & Reiser text. Be sure to do the practice exercises. These exercises will help you identify well-written vs. incomplete or poorly written behavioral objectives. They also will help you see how objectives may be used. Feel free to post your reactions to these exercises on the Discussion Forum entitled Uses of Behavioral Objectives, under the Lessons tab.