This month's columns include:

• Series: The Learning Process Methodology
• Step 4: Learning Objectives
• Challenge: Identify the Type of Learning Objective
• Something to Think About: Looking Fear in the Face
• Monthly Self-Growth Tip: Processing Weekly Carryover
• Making the Important Things Matter
• Self-Paced Teaching Workshop
• A New Year and a New Beginning

Types of Learning Objectives

Our preferred paradigm consists of five different types of learning objectives that are common in education: competencies, movement, accomplishments, experiences, and integrated performance. Each addresses a different aspect of learning and is best suited to specific educational methods and requires collecting different types of evidence to demonstrate that the learning objective has been achieved.

Learning is a social enterprise that contains elements that can be mapped on two axes. One axis is defined by what is learned (object) versus who is involved in the learning (subject); the other axis is defined by whether the learning has more of an individual or a collective orientation. When these axes intersect, as shown in Figure 1, four different regions emerge that suggest distinctive educational activities and objectives. On first blush, it may seem that this approach to learning objectives is needlessly complicated but it is this richer formulation that suggests to teachers (and learners!) an array of activity types and assessment tools, as well as fruitful perspectives for classroom research.

Figure 1 Types of Learning Objectives Mapped to the Axes of Social Learning

Competency Objectives (object focus, individual orientation)

Competency objectives are tasks that learners must perform at a prescribed level. These performance levels are often referenced to disciplinary standards and/or accreditation criteria. Competency objectives are snapshots of what learners can do at a specific point in time, and they are relatively easy to measure. Special attention should be given to exactly what levels of knowledge are expected so that these objectives reach the appropriate level in Bloom’s Taxonomy (information, conceptual understanding, application, working expertise, or research).



• Classroom Research Question: What can the learner do at what level in a specific situation?
• Common Learning Activity: guided-discovery; active learning
• Common Assessment Tool: exams with scoresheets

Movement Objectives (subject focus, individual orientation)

Movement objectives focus on personal and professional development. They prescribe a desired direction and magnitude of growth that extend well beyond the present capabilities of all learners. Movement objectives require multiple samplings over time to document whether real growth has occurred.

• Classroom Research Question: What does increased performance look like?
• Common Learning Activity: study of processes; use of tools
• Common Assessment Tool: self-growth papers

Experience Objectives (subject focus, collective orientation)

Experience objectives capture changes in attitudes, values, and behaviors that result in a life-changing experience. They should reveal awareness and critical analysis of the causes and impacts of personal changes in the learner. When the learner processes the experience, it should produce new understanding that can be shared with others through purposeful reflection and self-assessment.

• Classroom Research Question: How has this shared experience changed the learner?
• Common Learning Activity: team building; contests
• Common Assessment Tool: personal interviews; focus groups

Accomplishment/Achievement Objectives (object focus, collective orientation)

An example of an accomplishment objective would be a major work product or creative performance that is significant within a disciplinary field. They usually represent clear endpoints and can often be archived for future reference or study. When measuring accomplishment objectives , it is possible to eliminate instructor bias by getting outside affirmation from other faculty, alumni, or practitioners in a field. Often these objectives can be evaluated and celebrated at the same time in a public display. Frequently they can also be listed on a student’s resume documenting their ability to perform in specific areas.

• Classroom Research Question: How well does student work compare with work products of practitioners in the field?
• Common Learning Activity: project work
• Common Assessment Tool: judging work products

Integrated Performance Objectives (multiple combinations of the four outcome types)

Integrated performance objectives draw on previous types of learning and experiences from multiple sources. They require extension and transfer of knowledge, skills, and perspectives in a professional environment. This type of objective must be measured in a challenging and compelling situation that ensures peak performance on the part of the learner in a relatively short period of time. Integrated performance can be studied at the beginning of a course as a pre-assessment activity or at the end of a course as a summative evaluation. Integrated performance objectives are especially efficient and effective in answering questions connected with program assessment.



• Classroom Research Question: How prepared are students to respond to a real-world challenge?
• Common Learning Activity: role playing; problem solving
• Common Assessment Tool: panel of mentors or colleagues

Ready for a challenge???

Test yourself:

Identify the Type of Learning Objective

Click to begin an interactive quiz!

“We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

By FDR Presidential Library & Museum - www.flickr.com/photos/fdrlibrary/50517137801/, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=156984585

Monthly Self-Growth Tip



Processing weekly carry-over

When a to-do-list expands beyond a reasonable level, you need to apply new strategies!

1. Sort and rank the list based on urgency and importance. (See the Time Management Matrix in the article below.) Then determine which items have dire consequences, if any.
2. Determine which items can be delegated without serious ramifications.
3. Defer some of the items by a week (if possible) to see if maybe they become less important.
4. Find new ways of achieving certain items in less time at a similar level of quality (increase your efficiency).
5. Finally, postpone starting anything new until your to-do-list is once again manageable.



Making the Important Things Matter

President Dwight D. Eisenhower said,

“Most things which are urgent are not important,

and most things which are important are not urgent.”

He is known to have made use of a matrix which is now sometimes called the Eisenhower Matrix or Importance-Urgency Matrix.

It’s important to realize that urgency itself is not the problem. The problem is that when urgency is the dominant factor in our lives, importance isn’t. What we regard as ‘first things’ are urgent things. We’re so caught up in doing, we don’t even stop to ask if what we’re doing really needs to be done.

The Time Management Matrix (shown above) can help you focus your time and energy on what’s most important and avoid those activities that are less important or not important to you.

While the Matrix is incredibly useful for professionals, it may be even more important for students, as they generally have not yet developed critical learning skills such as prioritizing. We recognize this and have an entire chapter and activity devoted to time management in our Learn to Learn for Success course!

Self-Paced Teaching Workshop

It’s a thing! And ready for anyone to use.

At an introductory cost of just $200, it’s also an amazing value.

If you tried the Learning Objectives Challenge, you had a little taste of how thoughtful and interesting learning is in the Self-Paced Teaching Workshop. While we've gamified some aspects of learning, what we haven't done is cut back on the content that helps participants convert from a traditionally-oriented classroom to one that is learner and learning-centered. In fact, this self-paced workshop offers the opportunity to grow and develop as an educator, no matter your current level or experience. The activities and resources provide participants with a greater understanding of Process Education/active learning and key educational processes. It will help you to:

• Challenge yourself and your students
• Move from memorizing to problem solving
• Go from faculty-centered to learner-centered
• Transition from presentation to active learning
• Learn to create responsive curricula
• Explore the value of cooperative learning
• Increase belief in your own efficacy and that of your students
• Learn to use assessment as a powerful alternative to evaluation
• Find ways to meaningfully measure the quality of performance
• Engage in self-directed learning (and learn how to facilitate it!)
• Become invested in growth for yourself and learn how to foster it in your students

A New Year and a New Beginning

We tend to look to the new year as a clean slate and a chance for a new beginning. Except that as anyone who has made New Year’s resolutions knows, the choices and actions of our yesterdays loaded today with momentum and it is extremely difficult to escape the gravity well of genes, habit, and history. It is always easiest to keep walking the path we’re on…it is usually the path of least resistance. Or at least the resistance we're familiar with.

In the book Endymion by Dan Simmons, a character considers how to give the best possible message of hope to humanity—a kind of updated sermon on the mount. Her goal was to pare this message down to its most critical essence. She worked on it for years and finally got it down to two words.

CHOOSE AGAIN.

With every single breath, you can choose again. You can make a different choice or the same choice you made before. The point is that you choose again. What went before is nothing compared to what you can do by choosing again, right now. Making a choice, though only the work of a moment, is a brave act of will and participation that makes your life intentional. The consequences of your choice will often be a transition that you will work through and sometimes it takes a great deal of time and effort, depending on the choice you’ve made. But if you are ready for a new beginning, to do more than move forward on the momentum that brought you to this time and place, choose again.

Choices don’t have to be big to make a difference, especially in our lives. A small pebble cast into a pond sends out waves in every direction. Choosing to turn off the TV, to watch a sunrise, to smile at a stranger, to not do something we’d ordinarily do, or to do something we usually wouldn’t…these are small things but each of them sets us on a new path and changes the course of what went before. Even choosing again what we chose before is a profound act, as it affirms our intention and renews our commitment to our choice.