A learning objective is a statement of something students should

Developing Learning Objectives

Learning objectives (also known as learning outcomes) are essential for effective learning. They help to articulate what students should be able to do as a result of the instruction and consequently aid in designing more effective instruction planning, activities, and assessments (Gronlund, 2000). When developing learning objectives, carefully consider what students should learn and be able to accomplish from the instruction. The revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001) is very helpful for writing action-based learning objectives and identifying the appropriate cognitive level (Fig. 3.2).

A basic formula for creating a learning objective is:

Studentswill beableto + Action(verb)+ Skill/Knowledge/Ability

For instance, in an environmental sciences course, students should be familiar with examples of gray literature relevant to that subject area (e.g., government documents such as US Forest Service General Technical Reports).

LearningObjectiveundefined=undefinedStudentswillbeabletonametworelevantundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefined undefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefined undefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedexamplesundefinedofgrayliteraturerelevanttotheundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefined undefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedenvironmentalsciences

This learning objective would fall in Level 1 (Remember).

Moving to the next level (Understand), students should understand how gray literature sources are important to the field of environmental sciences.

LearningObjectiveundefined=undefinedStudentswillbeabletoexplain theroleofgrayundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefined undefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedundefinedliteraturesourcesintheenvironmentalsciences

Writing learning objectives can be challenging, especially at first. With practice, however, it becomes easier, and there are a number of books, articles, and web-based resources available to provide guidance.

Information literacy learning objectives should be aligned with those at the course, program, and institution levels (Fig. 3.3). The learning objectives created for the information literacy component of the course should be connected to what students are expected to learn as part of the course itself. Collectively, these objectives should contribute to the achievement of the program-level and, ultimately, the institution-level objectives. Such alignment ensures that the information literacy instruction is value added and intentional (O’Clair, in press).

Learning Objectives or Targets

Learning objectives or targets are statements that define what students are expected to learn. Since the early 1990s the term standards has been used to designate what students should learn at different grade levels in each subject. It is important for these statements to be clear and reflect the range of content and skills to be emphasized, as well as the level of cognition required to demonstrate what has been learned. States have identified standards that are the basis for accountability tests. They tend to be broad, covering an entire year of learning. Objectives and learning targets are more specific and refer to what is to be achieved over short units of instruction.

The level of cognition or thinking needed for meeting learning objectives is a critical part of classroom assessment. Cognition can be very simple and consist of recalling or remembering something, or more complex in requiring knowledge utilization with skills such as application, analysis, reasoning, critical thinking, or evaluation of something (these are often called higher-order skills) (Marzano and Kendall, 2007). Educators often use Bloom's taxonomies to define levels of skills (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001; Bloom, 1956), although there are others that reflect more recent research (e.g., Marzano and Kendall, 2007). As long as the objective is clear it will provide a sound basis for the assessments and how results will be scored.

Learning at the Portfolio Level

The GEF Results-Based Management (RBM) framework and approach includes an emphasis on portfolio monitoring and learning by placing particular attention on using monitoring information for accountability, internal management, learning, and knowledge management.

In support of the GEF RBM and based on a review of evaluations of the BD focal area, a select number of learning objectives were identified for the BD focal area and these were included in the GEF-5 BD strategy to be implemented and lead by the GEF Secretariat in collaboration with the GEF Agencies.

The three learning objectives share in common a dual-fold purpose, in that the results will contribute to strengthening GEF's capacity to deliver on its own mandate and the broader global public good of enhanced knowledge to catalyze change in BD conservation practice. Three learning objectives are proposed for implementation in GEF-5 and include:

Learning Objective One: “Enhancing Impacts and Outcomes through Improved Understanding of Protected Area Management Effectiveness.” The learning objective is to better correlate protected area management effectiveness as recorded by a scorecard (Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT)) to the successful conservation and sustainable use of BD within a protected area. This learning objective will be accomplished through a series of country case studies and field visits to select countries that have been applying the METT over an extended period of time in their protected area system and that are also collecting quantitative data on the status of BD and protection within the system.

Learning Objective Two: “Enhancing Social Impacts through Improved Understanding of the Causal Relationships between Protected Area Management and Local Community Welfare.” This learning objective seeks to answer the following question, “What has been the impact of protected areas on human welfare?” This learning objective will be accomplished through a systematic review of the literature as well as complementary case studies when these are designed to focus on elucidating potential causal relationships.

Learning Objective Three: “Enhancing Impacts through Improved Understanding of the Causal Relationships between Popular Mainstreaming Approaches and Conservation Outcomes.” As a leader in supporting innovative incentive-based and information-based mainstreaming approaches, the GEF has observed an increase in the number of funded projects using certification, Payment for ecosystem services (PESs), and ecosystem service valuation. Thus, the GEF has an opportunity to contribute the evidence base of these approaches by supporting work to answer the following question, “How do certification, PES, and transfers of information about the distribution and values of ecosystem services affect conservation and sustainable use outcomes, and in what circumstances are they likely to be most effective?” This learning objective will be accomplished primarily through the support of prospective experimental and quasi-experimental project designs. When feasible, quantitative retrospective studies in programs that have received GEF funding will also be supported.

The GEF network of agencies, partner government, and nongovernment executing agencies and country-based staff will be the main users of the findings derived from the portfolio monitoring and learning review process.

Given the extensive investment that the GEF has made in protected areas over the course of its existence ($1.89 billion of GEF resources, which supported 2302 protected areas spanning 634 million ha and 700 globally threatened species), priority has been placed on first implementing learning objective one, “Enhancing Impacts and Outcomes through Improved Understanding of Protected Area Management Effectiveness,” through five country case studies as a priority for the first 2 years of GEF-5. The first learning mission was undertaken in Zambia in 2010 and the full report can be found at: http://www.thegef.org. The report represents a new era of portfolio monitoring and learning at the GEF, where the portfolio is used as a source for developing the evidence base for effective conservation investments.

Identifying the learning objectives

Thinking about learning and teaching, students and teachers, and the context in which learning will happen, may feel like taking a very circuitous route to thinking about what your students will actually learn, but these things are important in setting the boundaries of any teaching episode. You are now ready to focus on the learning objectives that students will achieve by completing your course or subject. You may be familiar with the terms learning objective and learning outcome. We will be referring to both of these terms because the learning objective determines the intended learning outcome: the learning objective establishes the expectation of what the learning outcome will be, while the learning outcome does not actually occur until the learning has taken place. However, our main emphasis will be on learning objectives since these relate to the planning of learning and assessment which is our focus in this book.

A useful way to start, particularly if you are focusing on a subject that you have taught before, is to think about any issues or problems you have experienced that might be resolved by an online approach. Alternatively, you may be able to envisage some opportunities that online learning or assessment might offer. Then consider the learning objectives related to these issues, problems or opportunities and use them to guide your planning. If you have not taught the subject before, or if you are new to teaching, it is still important to think about your rationale for online teaching in terms of the relevant learning objectives.

The learning objectives should be at the centre of your planning because:

achievement of them (or otherwise) will provide the evidence of whether the intended learning has occurred;

they will guide the design of the learning activities that you plan to foster the learning of your students and also the assessment tasks that you set to identify whether or not they have been achieved;

they will identify what ‘content’ you need to provide to help students to complete the learning activities and assessment tasks; and, importantly, if you are considering the use of learning technologies;

they will play a key role in determining your technology options as we shall see in Chapter 2.

There is a skill to writing learning objectives well. In particular, they should:

be specific, identifying exactly what students should be able to do to meet them; and

require students to do something measurable or performance-based, so that someone other than the student can identify whether the objective has been achieved.

Try to avoid verbs like understand or know when writing cognitive learning objectives because they describe outcomes that are neither specific nor measurable.

It is interesting to note that although learning objectives (identifying specific, measurable behaviours) were associated with behavioural psychology concepts of the mid-twentieth century, they have transcended the developments in understandings about learning which have occurred since then and are applicable to perspectives of learning which focus on the experience of the learner. Hence the importance of their role has been supported from a phenomenographical perspective (e.g., Laurillard, 2002) and from a constructivist perspective (e.g., Biggs & Tang, 2007).

The scope of a learning objective can vary, with broader subject-level objectives supported by narrower, more specific objectives for components of the subject. At an even broader level, the extent to which students can meet particular learning objectives may be used to determine whether they have accomplished identified graduate attributes. These are the desirable characteristics, skills, abilities and learning achievements which students take with them when they leave their course. Ideally, they are reflected in objectives at all levels.

There are a number of tools available to assist you in developing learning objectives. One way to do this is to use the taxonomy of educational objectives developed by Bloom and his colleagues in 1956 and revised by Anderson et al. (2001). This taxonomy identifies six categories in the cognitive process dimension from the simple recall or recognition of facts, through to increasingly complex and abstract cognitive processes, as shown in Figure 1.1.

Verbs to identify behaviour for each cognitive process can then be used in the writing of objectives (see Table 1.2). You will find many examples of verbs for writing learning objectives if you search the internet. Table 1.2 provides a sample list.

Table 1.2. Verbs for writing learning objectives using Bloom’s (revised) taxonomy

Please note:

While Figure 1.1 is organised to show the lowest cognitive levels at the base of the diagram, with the highest at the top, Table 1.2 moves from the lowest levels at the beginning of the table to the highest levels at the end.

Anderson et al. (2001) also identify four knowledge types associated with each cognitive process (factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge and meta-cognitive knowledge). The examples of verbs in Table 1.2 have not been classified into these knowledge types.

Learning outcomes from level 1 represent the remembering of previously learned material, and are generally recognised as the simplest level of learning outcomes. As students move up the levels of the pyramid, their ability to critically analyse new material, solve problems and propose innovative solutions increases. Usually, in supporting learning, we aim to assist students in moving up these learning levels.

Goals and Learning Objectives

The primary goal of this book is to give readers an understanding of mitigation and the mitigation planning process. Readers will learn the full spectrum of hazards posed to society and how to create hazard mitigation plans to combat these hazards. Case studies of mitigation projects and mitigation plans are presented that illustrate the development of a hazard mitigation plan and the mitigation planning process. This text discusses government programs, private-sector initiatives, and regulations that encompass hazard mitigation. Users of this book will get the opportunity to develop skills in using mitigation tools such as HAZUS-MH.

Specific learning objectives for this textbook are outlined as follows:

Recognize the relationships of hazards and their potential behaviors that may ultimately lead to a disaster

Understand how local, state, and federal emergency management agencies (EMAs) can mitigate the effect of a potential threat

Acquire a general knowledge of and be able to discuss the laws and regulations that support the regulatory environment for the practice of emergency management and hazard mitigation in the United States and other countries

Understand the hazard mitigation planning process and be able to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed hazard mitigation measures

Build on knowledge of the use of risk assessment in hazard mitigation

Expand the ability to use and apply a sound methodology to quantify the benefit-cost analysis of proposed hazard mitigation measures

Develop a mitigation strategy

Identify the knowledge and skills to maintain a mitigation plan

Understand dependency relationships in hazard mitigation

Articulate learning objectives and base everything—content, activities, assessment—on those objectives

What are learning objectives, and why are they so important? Unlike goals, which are generally teacher-centered, and talk about what you will do (e.g. “discuss the Boolean operator OR as a means of increasing the number of search results”), learning objectives are student-centered and indicate what students will be able to do as a result of your class. In the K-12 world, these objectives conventionally start with “The student will be able to” or even the acronym TSWBAT, and this is a suitable prefix for learning objectives in higher education as well.

Just as important as that student-centered opening clause is the verb that immediately follows it. Avoid using the catchall “understand” here. Understanding is an amorphous concept; how does one know whether students have understood a concept or not? What if they “understand” 90 per cent of what you said about the Boolean operator OR: Will the class have been successful? What if that “understanding” drops to only 50 per cent two weeks after the class? Additionally, “understand” too often means simple recall.

Learning objective verbs ought to be action verbs, and measurable in some way. Measurability is important: it reveals how successful you were as an instructor, as well as ensures that students walk away from the class with a tangible ability. Benjamin Bloom led a group that produced an inventory of such verbs in the mid-twentieth century that has been a cornerstone of education since its publication. Bloom’s Taxonomy classifies learning-related verbs by level of comprehension, specifically by what students will be able to do; exactly what one wants in a learning objective (see Figure 14.1).

Shifting away from what the teacher will do to what the students will learn is a key element in successful lesson planning and teaching because it prompts the instructor to plan the class in a way that meets those objectives, as opposed to simply making sure that each item on a list of concepts has been checked off by the end of class. If the library works closely with a particular department, as mine does, library- or research-related learning objectives may already have been articulated on the course’s syllabus. In most cases, though, you will likely have to create your own based on the specific requests of the professor of record.

Each activity, each discussion point, on a lesson plan should support one of that session’s learning objectives in some way. An activity-oriented class can therefore be just as ineffective as a lecture-based one: while the students may be more engaged in class, the session ends up consisting of busy work, a way to fill up the time. Including the learning objectives on the lesson plan also helps ensure that there is at least one activity or content chunk which fulfills that objective.

Consider including a learning objective (or phrasing all of your learning objectives in a way) that highlights their usefulness outside the academic environment in “real life”: for example, “The student will be able to evaluate websites for their reliability based on their author, creation date, and content”. Many skills that librarians teach in information literacy classes are ones that will be useful even after the students have graduated, but students are not likely to make such connections themselves. Again, by making yourself as the instructor think about the intended learning outcomes in this way, you ensure that these larger implications are not lost in nitty-gritty explanations of how to, say, use wildcards in ProQuest databases, and the chances are higher that you will make the connections for your students. If students see a benefit to what they’re learning beyond a passing grade on whatever research project they’re working on, they are more likely to pay attention (Gerding & Hough, 2011).

Introduction

The learning objectives which you identified in Chapter 1, and which guided your selection of technologies in Chapter 2, should continue to drive the planning of your online learning design, which we cover in this chapter. They will also guide the design of online assessment, which we will begin to consider in this chapter but address in more detail in Chapter 4.

In Chapter 1, when we asked you to think about how students learn, we referred to two learning theories that have been important in higher education (phenomenography and constructivism) and noted that constructivism has been particularly influential in the field of educational technology. We will begin this chapter with some further comments about theories and models which may be useful in guiding your online learning design. It is the process of designing your online environment which will clarify the need to reconceptualise your teaching which we introduced in Chapter 1.

Then, with your objectives in mind, we will address some important elements of online learning design. These include learning activities (both individual and collaborative, and the provision of feedback on them) as well as the resources and support you will provide for your students. We will refer to both pre-Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 applications in considering these aspects of design.

Following this we will ask you to think about some of the issues you may face in developing your online environment because, along with the issues you considered in Chapter 2, these may also impact on the options available to you. We will then summarise some of the general student support, management and administrative issues that may affect the implementation of your design. By the end of this chapter you should have a good grasp of how to design and implement your online learning environment, prior to considering some specific aspects of online assessment in Chapter 4.

You should keep in mind as you work through this chapter that you do not have to include ‘everything’ in your online environment the first time that you implement it. Online learning design is an iterative process and you will finetune your environment over time as you gain experience and feedback. It is best to start with small, manageable components if you can, rather than trying to do too much and alienating students if they have problems. Such problems experienced early in a teaching period can override the advantages to learning that you hoped your environment would offer.

Examples of good practice

There is relatively little literature describing actual examples of good practice. Keenan and McDonald (2009) have described an information literacy course they ran for an Australian company earlier in the decade. It consisted of:

Creating Quality Assignments

Developing clear learning objectives is merely an early step in instructional planning for effective teachers. Creating quality assignments is another characteristic of an effective teachers' lesson planning. In practice, they recognize that the assignment is just as important as the objective as it is the means to the end. The idea that clear objectives, followed by quality assignments, lead to student achievement, should make sense. Studies have found significant relationships between quality of classroom assignments and quality of student work (Clare, 2001; Koh and Luke, 2009).

Choice of educational strategies

Once the learning objectives are established, we next need to identify the learning strategies to be adopted for pursuing those objectives. These may include instructional training (in the use of tools and services), discussion, collaborative work, simulation, role playing or tutorials, to name but a few.

A learning path can feature a variety of strategies, each dependent on the type of objective pursued (see Figure 4.6).

It is vital to identify the most appropriate methodology for applying each of these strategies. For example, collaborative production can be carried out in parallel, sequential or reciprocal mode (Diaper and Sanger, 1993), just as a discussion can be managed in a forum, a roundtable, etc.

In any case, identifying educational strategies calls for a degree of awareness about what network interaction involves, the dynamics of CMC and how effective different strategies may be at different moments in online activity. So the classroom experience that a teacher/trainer has gained over the years provides no guarantee of success when working in online learning, especially the first time out.