Goals and Objectives

Kemp, Morrison, and Ross, 1998

Goals:

• To differentiate between goals and objectives.
• To write useful objectives for three different domains of learning.
• To discuss the application of goals and objectives.
• To reflect on the development of goals and objectives within a constructivist learning framework.

Content Overview

In this module, we begin to wrestle with goals and objectives and the best way to develop and present them. This affects both the development team and the students because goals and objectives have functions with both groups. On the one hand, goals and objectives are very useful communication and focusing tools for the development team, whether that team is a single teacher or a group of ten. They keep the purpose of the instruction clear and provide a guide to many of the development activities which often involve others, such as the production tasks and evaluation.

On the other hand, it must be emphasized that goals and objectives inform students about the learning tasks they face and, consequently, how to orient themselves both to the tasks and to the subsequent assessment of their progress. Goals and objectives are of great importance in virtual schooling. Whereas teachers in a classroom setting may create a general lesson plan and spontaneously fine-tune the details as instruction occurs in order to suit student needs, online educators must design objectives that anticipate student needs. The virtual school student reviews the lesson, which is most likely print-based, and usually independent of any verbal details to fill in the gaps. It is more difficult for the online educator to later add on those details that he or she forgot to include, especially if a student chooses to work from a printed copy of the lesson and neglects to check the web-based version for updates.

Goals and objectives are also imprecise terms. Goals are sometimes thought of as narrow and more precise in scope than objectives, whereas in other writings, goals are broader. For our course, goals are to be thought of as broader than objectives. Objectives will be referred to as performance objectives, instructional objectives, or learning objectives.

What are the differences between performance objectives, instructional objectives and learning objectives? It depends on the author you read. A performance objective, as we will use the term, is an evolved form of behavioural objective. It implies an understanding of the role that unobservable cognition plays in influencing and mediating most observable behaviours. Instructional objectives may be seen to imply a stronger role for the instructional system and the interventions that may be brought about by an instructional designer or a teacher. A learning objective, on the other hand, is sometimes thought to provide a more definite statement of the importance of the learner in accepting and achieving any level of acquisition of knowledge, skills, or attitudes in a learning environment.

We can break down this objective into its three components:

Action Verb: calculate

Condition: Given the dimensions of a rectangular solid

Criteria: providing the formula and each step of your work

The next example is a classic performance objective, taken from Kemp, Morrison, and Ross (1998), for an analysis task:

The components for the above example are as follows:

Action verb: compare

Condition: Based on assigned readings

Criteria: enumerating at least five characteristics of each

But what happened to "the cultures of two past civilizations" that follows the action verb? These words reflect the subject content reference, which describes the content treated. The action verb combined with the subject content reference indicates what the student is to achieve (Kemp, Morrison, & Ross, 1998).

This three-element approach is often useful in online education to clarify the expectations for the student. They are given the condition, which describes the requirement for the learning activity (reading, materials, etc.), the action they are expected to do, and the criteria for their assessment. This high level of specificity will enable online students to better understand what is expected of them.

Objectives can also be divided into three domains: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective (Bloom, 1956). Each of these domains are described in detail in the Kemp, Morrison, and Ross (1998) reading, but a brief outline of their description is as follows:

• Cognitive:  relate to information or knowledge
• Psychomotor:  relate to skills requiring the use and coordination of skeletal muscles, as in the physical activities of performing, manipulating, and constructing.
• Affective:  relate to attitude, appreciation, values, and emotions

In discussing objectives, Kemp, Morrison, and Ross (1998) have used the traditional Bloom approach to describing cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning. It is useful at this point to recall the different taxonomies of learning which have been developed, particularly in the cognitive domain. Kemp, Morrison, and Ross provide a reasonably thorough description of writing what they call behavioural objectives, but which would also be called performance objectives by many others today. This kind of objective is fairly easy to write for lower level cognitive activities and simple psychomotor skills. It is considerably more difficult to write good performance objectives for higher level learning activities such as complex analyses or problem solving activities, or for highly complex psychomotor skills, which involve numerous context bound judgments, such as those involved in landing an airplane. For that reason, other approaches have been considered for writing such higher level objectives. The work of Gronlund (1991), which Kemp, Morrison, and Ross describe, is a good example of such an approach.

We have focussed on how to design a specific objective, but not all learning activities are narrowly defined. In addition to focusing on intended outcomes, Gronlund (1991) indicates that objectives must be designed "at an appropriate level of generality for the type of instruction to be used" (p. 3). For example, many online activities may use a constructivist approach, in which case objectives must be phrased in a more general manner or they could be negotiated, rather than imposed (Jonassen, 1993). Although constructivism and objectivism (sometimes now called instructionism) may appear to be diametrically opposed theories, Cole (1992) questions whether a dichotomy must exist: should one "either … present a detailed list of goals/objectives or … present none? Why is it not possible to provide goals to orient the learner, while at the same time encouraging the learner to identify and pursue personal goals?" (p. 30). We encourage you to reflect on the differences between these two approaches and on what you believe about how students learn and what the role of the teacher should (or can) be. In doing that, it may be useful to think about the following:

Constructivism claims that learners can only interpret information in the context of their own experiences, and what they interpret will, to some extent, be individualistic. As objective designers, we may intend to map a particular reality onto learners, but they ultimately interpret our messages in the context of their own experiences and knowledge and construct their own meaning relative to their needs, background, and interests. Rather than attempting to map the structure of an external reality onto others, constructivists recommend that we help them construct meaningful and conceptually functional representations of the external world.  (Jonassen, 1992, p. 139).

It is worth emphasizing here two essential elements of the use of objectives or goals in constructitivist learning. First, the student will interpret and must accept the goal or objective. Secondly, the instruction and assessment which follow those objectives are based on trying to help students build a sound and useful representation of knowledge, not to map the instructor's reality onto them.

Objectives in the affective domain are more complicated to write and use than those in the cognitive or psychomotor domain. It is generally accepted that changes to attitudes, feelings, and values do not take place as a result of short-term instructional interventions. Even if they did, these changes would be very difficult to measure in any reliable fashion as they must be inferred from other behaviours or statements, most of which are observed or heard outside of any authentic context in which true feelings and attitudes may emerge. Take, for example, the following objective from the 1987 Alberta Program of Studies for junior high Language Arts students: "The students should be able to appreciate and be tolerant of the many dialects and accents with which our language can be spoken" (p. 5). It would be extremely difficult for a teacher to measure the extent to which a student is genuinely appreciative or tolerant. This objective was revised in the 1998 version in favour of a more behavioural approach: "explore the derivation and use of words, phrases, and jargon, including variations in language, accent, and dialect in Canadian communities and regions" (Alberta Education, p. 74).

One generally used approach to writing affective objectives, as outlined by Kemp, Morrison, and Ross (1998), is to "specify behaviors indirectly by inferring from what the instructor can observe. What the learner does or says is assumed as evidence of behavior relating to an affective objective" (p. 82). It is also suggested that this type of objective be broken into two parts: a cognitive component and a behavior that would represent the attitude, feeling, or appreciation intended. While the approach described by Kemp, Morrison, and Ross is fairly usual, it is important to understand the complications that may arise in trying to develop performance objectives for the affective domain. In an online environment, assessing students in affective objectives may be somewhat more problematic, depending on the extent of interaction between the teacher and the student. It is also likely that students will "clue in" to the response the teacher wants to hear, and not express feelings and beliefs that may not be welcome.

The Alberta program of studies includes a number of affective objectives. For example, the attitude objectives that students should develop in social studies (1989) include "positive attitudes about learning", "attitudes of respect, tolerance and understanding toward individuals, groups, and cultures in one's community and in other communities", and "an attitude of responsibility toward the environment and community" (p. 3). Since these objectives are mandated, online educators are obligated to incorporate them into their lessons. How those objectives are to be measured in any genuine manner is a great challenge.

Before moving on to the next topic, it is also worth emphasizing that one of the biggest problems beginning instructional designers face is writing objectives at the right level of specificity. Constructivist goals/objectives should be written more generally than those for an instructionist lesson. For instructionist lessons, a useful heuristic is that if the objective can be easily broken into 3 or 4 (or more) good objectives, it is too general. With practice, you will get it right.

Having discussed the three domains of objectives, we should now turn our attention to the models that can be used to classify objectives and to prescribe instructional strategies. In Kemp, Morrison, and Ross (1998), you are asked to review the Mager and Beach model, for classroom instruction, and the performance-content matrix model, for a structured ID approach. Mager and Beach (1967) classify objectives into one of five categories (speech, manipulation, recall, discrimination, and problem-solving) and then rank them into one of four difficulty levels: easy, moderately difficult, difficult, and very difficult (Kemp, Morrison, & Ross, 1998). The performance-content matrix model is an expanded revision of the original model proposed by Merrill in 1983. This expanded version provides six content categories in which to classify objectives. These are fact, concept, principles/rules, procedure, interpersonal, and attitude. The matrix provides a means by which to refine objectives so as not to allow two or more objectives to be embedded into one. The performance of the objective can also be classified into one of two categories: recall or application. In summary, both the Mager/Beach and Kemp, Morrison, and Ross classification models allow a systematic approach to classifying objectives in order to develop instructional strategies and sequencing, and they will be discussed in more depth in the reading. Instructional strategies and sequencing will be covered in a later module.

In this module, you are asked to read Chapter 5 of Kemp, Morrison, and Ross on Instructional Objectives.

After your module activity on goals and objectives has been marked and returned to you from your instructor, you are asked to enter the objectives you chose for your final project into your WebCT lesson.

Alberta Education (September, 1998). Program of Studies for English Language Arts: Kindergarten to Grade 9 [On-line]. Available: http://www.edc.gov.ab.ca/studentprograms/english/elak-9.pdf

Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives : The classification of educational goals. New York: Longmans, Green.

Cole, P. (1992). Constructivisum revisited: A search for common ground. Educational Technology, 32(2), 27-34.

Gronlund, R. (1991). How to write and use instructional objectives (4^th ed.). Toronto, Ontario: Collier-Macmillan.

Jonassen, D.H. (1992). Evaluating constructivist learning. Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction: A Conversation. T.M. Duffy & D.H. Jonassen (Eds.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Jonassen, D. (1993). Objectivism versus constructivism: Do we need a new instructional paradigm. Educational Technology Research and Development, 39 (3), pp. 5-14.

Kizlik, R. (1999). How to write behavioral objectives. Available [online] http://www.adprima.com/objectives.htm

Tips for Writing Objectives
[http://www.okbu.edu/academics/natsci/ed/398/objectives.htm]

Theory Into Practice (TIP) website
[http://www.gwu.edu/~tip/bruner.html]