Week 2: Learning Objectives and our own work

Week 2

The discussion started by asking; “From your perspective, why are learning objectives important for your own eLearning projects? What role do/will they play in your eLearning work?” There was initial discussion about the importance of defining learning objectives to limit the scope of work.

Blooms Taxonomy was brought up, and shown to be known to a good number of the cadre and very useful in writing lessons. This was new material for me and required additional research to understand.

Rubrics were also mentioned, developing accurate and meaningful evaluation. I had only recently seen a grading rubric before, so this subtopic was also useful and led to additional reading.

These flowered in to conversation about real world objectives and when they were used, or not used in particular experiences. A theme that developed was “instructional alignment”, the idea that learning objectives needed to map to a real world student goal.

This circled back to a question of why they were important for eLearning in particular. It had been put forward, and agreed, that they were good for everything. But, the focus on what did they do for eLearning was seen as important. There seemed to be consensus that they were important because of limitations inherent in eLearning. In particular, structured course presentation and clear goals for the learner are the result of well defined learning objectives.

My best contribution to the discussion was my initial post, which included: I've been trying to spin out objectives without getting down to the level of curriculum design. I work for a private institution that teaches English. Setting objectives like, "The student can use adjectives correctly" are going to be too broad. I imagine I would need to get specific, "Provided a list of adjectives the student can pick appropriate answers."

The reason for this was it prompted a reply Joni that included a link to Bloom’s Taxonomy, which was new information to several of the participants in the discussion, myself included. Also, in trying to get specific with the learning objective, I conflated learning objects with learning objectives. As I wasn’t alone in having problems with the words, it is fortunate that someone made the mistake and it could be addressed. Embarrassing, but helpful.