Summary+of+February+16+class

We covered the chapter on goals and objectives in this class. The Smith and Ragan text discusses content classification schemes for goals and objectives. The chapter becomes a little confusing because it falls under the umbrella of task analysis, yet it focuses so much on content classifications (intellectual skills, problem-solving, concepts ...) that the task (how people perform) becomes obscured, and the message lost -- inside a maze of content types. The chapter seems to fight with itself on some level. I'll need to go back and revisit the chapter.

The real learning opportunities in the class seem (at least to me) to come from our critique of the case study. I want students to create rich and authentic learning experiences ... but, I find that students are more focused on doing what they perceive I want, than on thinking through the instructional problems. I heard several times ... something to the effect ..."but ... I did this because you said ..." - or - "Is this what you want?" I remember being a doctoral student myself, and priding myself on figuring out what the professor wanted. So ... I understand the need to make me happy. But, I really just want people to create instruction that makes sense. I want the students to have confidence in their ability to solve the problem, even if it seems to contradict what they think they hear me saying in class.

It is so easy to create instruction on content, but not really to create instruction that focuses on the goal, or the task of the learner. In this class we identified three goals for writing objectives. Most of the instruction that we looked at didn't exactly focus on those identified goals. Instead, the instruction focused on much more than the goals, and in the end it just did not "work".

This is a huge teachable moment. Why does this happen? Does it happen because goals are simply tough to identify? Does it happen because students are trying to please the teacher? I sure hope students do some reflecting on this. I hope they look back at the chapter that was supposed to help us with this.