Like goals, objectives help us know where we're going. If you think of the goal as a statement of where your trip is heading -- "We're going to Los Angeles," for instance -- then the learning objectives are like the road map that help you get there. The degree of specificity will vary, but you'll have clearer directions if you set intermediate goals or learning objectives.
Helping learners to know what is expected of them, what they'll be tested on, and how their attainment of objectives will be measured is crucial to alleviating some learners' anxiety about their ability to attain an objective. Motivation theory tells us that confidence is one of the primary determinants of future expected learning. Confidence can be improved dramatically if clear learning objectives are shared with the learner directly.
At the conclusion of this module, you will be able to:
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.
Now that you have a clearer sense of what behavioral objectives are, take some time to create at least three that support your overall learning goal (the one you created in Module 3).
Try out your objectives first by placing some drafts into the Discussion Forum called Objectives Drafts for feedback from your classmates. Don't forget to offer your colleagues feedback on their work as well.
In our Lessons folder, you'll find a dropbox called Behavioral Objectives. Please put your final behavioral objectives for grading into this dropbox. Recall that you should have at least three objectives, but you also might take the time to flesh out all of the objectives for this unit based on your one-hour learning goal. Be specific, but remember that you have only one hour of instructional time in which to accomplish your learning goal -- so don't overplan.
Recall that your objectives will be graded based on their systemic nature (the alignment between the objectives and the goal), clarity, and fidelity to the model.
This assignment is worth 100 points.