III. Objectives

Please Note: The objectives are the most important aspect of the instructional design of your course. Well-written objectives help you in planning, organizing and delivering course content and help students direct and monitor their own learning. The objectives are used when writing the assessment questions within the course.

More Info:

Knowledge recall and the intellectual skills to construct knowledge demonstrate cognitive learning. Click here to read about Bloom's Taxonomy and how it can help you constructive better objectives that will help the student learn at a higher level.

Click here to go to an excellent site for help in constructing well-written objectives!

Each objective states what students will be able to do after the lesson and the level or depth of learning expected.

Once again, your lesson objectives should meet the strategic objectives of the USGS.

Please Note: Your lesson assessment questions should be based off your lesson objectives.

Example:

At the end of this lesson, the student will be able to differentiate between monitoring and compliance.

At the end of this lesson, the student will be able to identify the components of a standard English bridle and saddle and explain the design and purpose of each.

More Info:

Well-written objectives will consist of the following five parts: 1) Time Frame, 2) For the Trainee, 3) Behavior(s), 4) Standard(s), and 5) Condition(s). Using the course objective example above, let's break the objective down into those parts:

• Time Frame
  • "At the end of this course," gives a time frame. Almost all objectives relate to the end of the training, so this statement makes sense. You can also use, "At the end of this lesson." If the learning goes beyond the actual training course, or lesson, and into post-class activities, your objective may start with: "At the completion of the post-class activity," or "After working on the job for six months".
  • Use whatever statement works best for the situation, or mix statements as needed, but note somewhere in your objective what the time frame is for objective mastery.
• For the Trainee
  • "The trainee will be able to" is there for no other reason than to remind you, the Instructional Designer, for whom you are writing the objective. As silly as you may think this is, most Instructional Designers forget this part of the objective! This statement acts as a check so that when you read the completed objective you will know immediately whether it makes sense from the trainee's point of view.
  • Since it can be cumbersome to write these two types of introductory parts for each objective, most Instructional Designers make a blanket statement at the beginning of a list of objectives, something like:
    "At the end of this course, the trainees will be able to:
    1. Relate the company's strategic objectives to the concept of cross functionality.
    2. Differentiate between monitoring and compliance.
    3. Propose possible methods for leveraging resources to achieve company monitoring and compliance goals."
• Behavior(s)
  • "Choose the correct tread size" may be the most important part of the objective. This is the behavior, the thing the trainee must do or learn in the small piece of training that this objective relates to. The behavior(s) signals the trainees as to what must be done or learned in very specific terms. It also signals the Instructional Designer in the same way.
  • Behaviors must be observable.
  • New Instructional Designers often keep a list of observable behavior verbs handy when constructing objectives.
• Condition(s)
  • The condition or "given" is a bit more difficult to understand, as it often slips into the standard—and even more often is understood and not written in the objective at all. If the environment in which the behavior(s) will be performed is of paramount importance, a simple condition should be stated in the objective.
• Standard(s)
• "90 percent of the time" is the basic measurement aspect of the objective.
• Standards are a critical part of the objective.

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