You don’t need fancy videos or animations to make the training reflect what they need to do. And you don’t have to actually measure them doing it in real life if that’s not possible. The second example can be the test question.

In this case the User Guide is where they get the information, and the training teaches them the skills of when and how to use it. If the whole training is just information, then why is it training instead of a knowledge base/user guide/reference book?

Just like everything that is in a course, a Learning Objective should give learners some point of action and be directly related to what they need to do.

One of the approaches I follow is to:

1. Ask what the learners need to do to solve the performance goal.
2. What do learners need to know to be ale to do what was identified in Step 1.

So yes, asking trainee firefighters to put out a fire is impossible in an eLearning.

But asking them to put out a simulated fire by applying their knowledge about fires and seeing the consequences of their wrong choices / lack of knowledge is an effective way to achieve the goal.

Here are a few distinctive features ….

1. ABOs define “What the learners will have done during the workshop with each element of content to engage in active learning”.

2. ABOs are more specific than broad “learning objectives” (the Why) in that they are connected to specific content pieces. This helps to ensure congruence between the Content and Process.

3. ABOs always begin with verbs that describe what the participants will have done with the content. They can help switch the focus from “listening” and “watching” to more active learning. .

4. In writing ABOs, avoid Big Verbs like “understand” or “know” or “be able to” because they are too hard to verify. Instead, use verbs that describe observable actions: defined, diagrammed, role-played, salsaed…

5. ABOs specify the depth of the learning (i.e. as defined by Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Learning or other taxonomies). In general, the deeper the learning, the higher the retention and the easier it will be for them to transfer their new KSA’s to their workplace.

6. In completing a learning task to meet an ABO, the participants normally produce something – a list, a skit, a diagram, a group discussion – that provides concrete evidence to themselves and to the facilitator of their learning. This allows everyone to monitor their progress over the course of the workshop. You can also include these products in the course report.

7. ABOs are more immediate than “competencies” in that we want to describe what the participants will do during the learning event (Accountability), not what (we hope!) they will be able to do after the workshop. This is one reason that we write ABOs with the verbs in the “future perfect” tense (i.e. to describe an action that they will have completed before starting another future action).

8. ABOs should link directly to the behaviour change you hope the participants to demonstrate in their workplace or community.

9. ABOs embed the learning evaluation indicators into the design. They establish agreed-upon, observable points where you can assess whether the learners met an ABO and how well (Accountability). This can complement formal testing and it often less threatening for adult learners.

The process of learning something new is measured by being able to do, express or show someone or ourselves that we are capable of reproducing that new knowledge. Our behavior is different because of integrating that new knowledge (Smith, 1999) and changing behavior should be our goal for our students as providers of that new information.

While I design my Spanish classes for children, the first thing I do is ask the parents, who are seeking the class for them, how much exposure to Spanish the kids have had. This helps me establish how much prior knowledge they have of the language. However, my first interaction with the students becomes more valuable to me as I can see their reactions to me speaking in Spanish to them. After all, as stated by Ambrose, Bridges & DiPietro “not all prior knowledge provides an equally solid foundation for new learning”(2010, p.13). As I have parents who state that kids have taken 3 Spanish courses and still do not express him or herself with the basic greetings in Spanish. And just as well, there are those kids who have not taken any courses but just watched some bilingual T.V. program and yet, they express themselves with more vocabulary in Spanish.

As I begin these kind of classes, having pre-determined learning objectives go hand in hand with the actions I will guide students to take to use the language. The students’ experiences is a starting point for me as we learn best by doing, and parents want to hear their kids speak Spanish. So in this sense, my planning vs. my doing might differ sometimes but the need to have both “learning objectives” and a “focus on actions” is present all the time.

The learning objectives might be geared towards the parents who rightly so, want to have a clear picture of what I am going to be “teaching”. Whereas the actions will be my focus with students who want to see immediate usage and value to the Spanish class at the same time as they want to have fun. Therefore I would not begin with grammatical structures or verb conjugation for them to memorize. Instead, learning how to say good morning, good afternoon or good evening might be more important as an action.

References

Smith, M. K. (1999). Learning theory. The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm

Ambrose, Susan A.; Bridges, Michael W.; DiPietro, Michele. (2010). How Learning Works : Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching.