Instructional Objectives - Why are they so important?

Ah, instructional objectives. I bet you were tempted not to read this blog! My experience has been that they tend to evoke strong feelings in both faculty and students in a love-hate kind of way. Faculty do not enjoy writing them; students sometimes feel there are too many, and they don’t really understand how to use them to guide their study. But here is the thing. They are critically important to our ability to guide our students through the course and provide clear information about what they need to know and how they need to know it to achieve success. We can assess whether they met the course learning outcomes. Instructional objectives are the stepping stones to our learning outcomes. They are those measurable, focused, detailed statements using Bloom’s taxonomy and verbs that communicate what the students need to know, be able to do, or how to act or behave by the end of a segment (module, lecture) of learning. One way to determine if your instructional objectives are effective is by asking your students whether they know what they need to study and how for the exam.  If they can’t answer that question, there are two potential reasons. First, the quality of the instructional objectives is not written in a way that provides clear guidance. Second, and what I have found is more common, is that the students were never taught about why you wrote these objectives or how to use them. The first question we asked our students when they performed poorly on an exam was whether or not they used the instructional objectives to guide their study. The majority of the time, their response was no.  

In my discussion with students about the syllabus, I make it a point to review the importance of this document and, in particular, how to use the instructional objectives. I teach them why we write those objectives, their rationale, and about paying attention to the verb used in the objective. I also tell them that all the test questions are referenced to these objectives. So they already know what will be on the test (now they are really paying attention!). It won’t be on the test if it is not an objective. Knowing this guides students to where they need to focus their reading and studying efforts. If the student finds they are reading something that isn’t answering an objective, they don’t need to read it. That is not to say the information isn’t important; it is just that we must clearly define (learner-centered) what we expect of the students and what to know.

Let me give an example. Let’s use two instructional objectives for a multiple-choice, single-best-answer test.

  1. By the end of this class, students will be able to recognize the components of a medical history.
  2. By the end of the pulmonary module, given a patient scenario, students will be able to recommend and interpret common pulmonary laboratory blood test values to support a suspected diagnosis.

Using the examples above, I would ask the students how they would study for objective number one. Most say they would memorize the list – which is correct, given how the objective is written with the verb "recognize." Then I ask them the same question about number 2. Typical answers are that they would study the blood tests and values and then make sure they knew which values indicate which diseases, and they would also make sure they understood the clinical presentations for those diagnoses. The difference between these two objectives and how they will study differently becomes pretty clear to them.  I usually do several examples with the class to ensure they know how to spot the verb and how using these objectives provides them with a content exam blueprint. 

It has been my experience that when faculty take the time to go over the syllabus and to teach students how to effectively use it to help them be successful in the course, students not only appreciate it more and tend to read it, but they tend to feel better equipped for how and what to study. Also, once students understand instructional objectives, it helps keeps us on our toes to ensure we write them correctly.

 

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