First off, hello and welcome to my new blog! This blog will be an outlet for me to share my ideas, philosophies, and educational technologies with the blogging world. I already have two blogs started through this service, Calle Luna which focuses on my artistic mind. The other is Activando el Éxito, which focused on my initial learning experiences as a newbie teacher. Both have acquired quite a bit of virtual dust, so instead of adding posts to them, I created a new one. Sounded good at the time.
I think a blog specific to my "musings" as an educator is more than appropriate, and actually something that is very much needed. I've only been on this career path for three years (four if you count my student teaching at Ashland High School) and I have learned quite a bit about myself, what I enjoy teaching, how I teach, and what qualifies as good teaching.
The past year and a half I have had the extreme pleasure of working for the Kodiak Island Borough School District as the Virtual Learning Educational Technologist under what is titled the ENLIVEN Grant (Engaging Native Learners in Virtual Education Now...it's a mouthful). Click here to view the goals that were set for this grant. As I see it, my position focus is to facilitate the goal of "Improving Rural/Town Linked Virtual Learning." I have taken it upon myself to conduct the most current of research in online pedagogy, design, and instruction, a path of self-learning and improvement that proves a bit arduous at times.
Learning Objectives
In this blog post I wanted to focus on one element of a successful virtual learning standard that I have been learning in my Quality Matters PD at Kodiak Community College. Without divulging too much information about the standards (copyright infringement, etc) I will summarize it as this: Learning Objectives. A simple concept, but one that even veteran teachers may happen to overlook when designing an online course. Let's break it down as I understand it.
Course Objectives
Course objectives are the meat and bones of your online course. The bread to the educational butter. The chocolate at the bottom of your intellectual drumstick. (Can you tell I am hungry?) Without course objectives, you have nothing to develop in your course. Consider the educational trend towards the use of standards-based instruction. Many terms have been created in the world of education to define what a standard actually is: performance expectations, content standards, GLEs. What we are looking for is "What should students know and be able to do?" (Source)
Throughout the course of the semester, the school year, or however your class operates, students should be FULLY aware of well-defined course objectives, standards, performance expectations, whatever you wish to call it. Course objectives should be written in a language that students understand, and should avoid educational jargon.
Unit Objectives
The Unit objectives help the students to actualize the course objectives. They provide the framework for students to be successful in your class. Unit objectives could consist of completing tutorials, writing essays, creating math problems, or representing an element of art. They are the building blocks to the foundation of your course. It is crucially important that the Unit objectives are also written in a language students can understand, are measurable, and lead up to the course objectives you have set for your class.
"Students will be able to..." or SWBAT is what I frequently came across in the beginnings of my teaching career. These objectives help students to understand what they are studying, why they are studying it, and how they can be successful in your class.
Bloom's Taxonomy
Many of us are very good at remembering facts. For example, the pancreas produces insulin (and you thought it was useless). But it's what we do with those facts and how we apply them to higher levels of thinking that really make us the wonderful creatures we are. Enter Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist who established a framework for categorizing educational goals, or in this case, learning objectives. (Source) His framework has since been revised (2001) in such a way that it reflects the dynamic and active nature of learning by using verbs instead of nouns.
Why is this important? Action verbs lend themselves quite nicely to the SWBAT sentence. Depending on what type of cognitive function you are looking for, action verbs can help students know exactly what you are expecting from them. Conveniently there are a slue of action verbs available at your fingertips that can help you create your course and unit objectives. Recommended verbs to use with instructional design.
Examples
I have always recognized myself as a learner who needs to see examples of a concept in order to fully understand it. I have included some links below that focus on how to develop these objectives. In our next post we will look at types of activities and assessments that you can include to help students meet these objectives.
Video - Communicating Learning Goals
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