6 Writing Performance Objectives

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? 6? Writing Performance Objectives
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Background

• Robert Mager has influenced the total educational
  community through his emphasis on the need for
  clear, precise statements of what students should
  be able to do when they complete their
  instruction(121)
• In reality, most objectives were written and then
  placed in desk drawers, never to affect the
  instructional process(122)

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Background

• Summary Analyses of the research findings
  indicate a slight but significant advantage for
  students who are informed of the objectives for
  their instruction(122)
• Although some instructors might see objectives
  as detrimental to free flowing classroom
  discussion, they actually serve as a check on the
  relevance of discussion.(122)

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Concepts

• Performance objectives
• A detailed description of what students will be
  able to do when they complete a unit of
  instruction
• You should not be misled to think that an
  instructional objective describes what an
  instructor will be doing(123)
• When the instructional goal is converted to a
  behavioral objective, it is referred to as an
  terminal objective. The terminal objective
  describes exactly what the student will be able
  to do when he or she completes a unit of
  instruction(123)

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Concepts

• Performance objectives
• The objectives that describe the subordinate
  skills that pave the way to the achievement of
  the terminal objective are referred to as
  subordinate objectives(123)
• Performance objectives are derived from the
  skills in the instructional analysis. One or more
  objectives should be written for each of the
  skills identified in the instructional analysis.
  Sometimes, this includes writing objectives for
  the skills identified as entry behaviors.

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Concepts

• Components of an objective
• Behavior The objective must describe what
  learners will be able to do. This component
  contains both the action and the content or
  concept.(124)
• The conditions that will prevail while a learner
  carries out the task
• The criteria that will be used to evaluate
  learner performance
• One problem that sometimes occurs is that an
  objective may not convey any real information,
  even though it may meet the formatting criteria
  for being an objective Given a multiple-choice
  test, complete the test and achieve a score of at
  least nine out of ten correct.

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Concepts

• Derivation of behaviors
• If the subskills in the instructional analysis
  includes as it should, a clearly identifiable
  behavior, then the task of writing an objective
  becomes simply the adding of criteria for
  behavioral assessment and describing the
  conditions under which the behavior must be
  performed.(125)
• Most intellectual skills can be described by such
  verbs as identify, classify, demonstrate, or
  generate.(125)
• The instructor must review each objective and
  ask, Could I observe a learner doing this?(125)

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Concepts

• Derivation of behaviors
• Intellectual skill and verbal information
  objectives describe not only the actual behavior
  to be observed, but also the intent of the
  behavior circle the words vs identify.(125)
• Objectives that relate to psychomotor skills
  usually are easily expressed in terms of
  behavior(125).

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Concepts

• Derivation of conditions
• Conditions refer to the exact set of
  circumstances and resources that will be
  available to the learner when the objective is
  performed.(126)
• Functions of conditions 1) cue or stimulus, 2)
  the characteristics of any resource material, 3)
  scope and complexity of the task(126), 4) adding
  transfer knowledge and skills from the
  instructional setting to the performance
  setting(127)
• Specifying conditions for both psychomotor skills
  and attitudinal choices can be tricky(127)

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Concepts

• Derivation of criteria
• In specifying logical criteria, you must consider
  the nature of the task to be performed.
• Some intellectual skill and verbal information
  tasks have only one response, that would be
  considered correct.(128)
• You should keep in mind that specifying the
  number of times that learners are to perform the
  task does not indicate the behavior
  criterion(128)
• Criteria for judging the acceptability of a
  psychomotor skill performance may also need to be
  specified using a checklist to indicate the
  expected behaviors. Frequency counts or time
  limits might be necessary(128).

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Concepts

• Derivation of criteria
• You may find that a checklist of anticipated
  behaviors is the most efficient way to specify
  criteria for judging the acquisition of an
  attitude(129).
• It is wise to begin with a determination to avoid
  listing expert judgment as the criterion for an
  objective since it is not helpful to you or to
  the learners.(129)

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Concepts

• Process for writing objectives(130)
• Edit the goal to reflect that context
• Write the terminal objective to reflect the
  context of learning environment.
• Write objectives for each step in goal analysis
  for which there are no substeps shown.
• Write an objective for each grouping of substeps
  under a major step of the goal analysis, or write
  objectives for each substep.
• Write objectives for all subordinate skills
• Write objectives for entry behaviors if some
  students are likely not to possess them.

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Concepts

• Evaluation of objectives
• A good way to evaluate the clarity and
  feasibility of an objective you have written is
  to construct a test item that will be used to
  measure the learners accomplishment of the
  task(130).
• The point is that objectives have been found to
  be useful as statements of instructional
  intent(131)
• The function of objectives
• It is sometimes desirable to either shorten or
  reword the objectives so that they express ideas
  that can be understood by the learners based on
  their knowledge of the content(131)