W2: Mager's Instructional Objectives.

The first time I read Dr. Mager's Preparing Instructional Objectives: A critical tool in the development of effective instruction was last summer, in my R521 class.  I had experience writing learning objectives through my education and experience as an English teacher, however, I had never experienced writing such technical and specific instructional objectives.

Summary

The book covers how to write instructional objectives, but it also addresses why clearly stated objectives are so important and provides opportunities for learners to identify components and practice writing their own.

According to Mager, all instructional objectives should contain an audience (the who), a behavior (what the learner is expected to do), a condition (a context, a situation, etc), and a degree (quality of performance the learner must achieve, time limits for completion, etc.).

My favorite part of the book is probably the section on Gibberish (pg 142-143). Being in the field of education, I'm used to people relying on gibberish and holding it in a weird esteem. I'm much more fond of the short, simple, and say what you really mean approach that Mager endorses.

What I find most difficult about writing Mager-style instructional objectives is coming up with the degrees that meet his criteria. Because most of my trainings are professional developments for teachers and/or computer assisted language learning related, I find it very difficult to come up with meaningful, accurate, and effective measurement criteria for the objectives.

The aspect of Mager-style objectives I found most superfluous is the audience. I don't really see the point of saying "The student will be able to" over and over when by the nature of trainings and writing objectives it is directly implied that it is the student that will be able to demonstrate the ability. It's not like without directly stating this that one could get confused and think it was someone other than the student. It would seem to me that one should be able to define their audience before stating the objectives, and then the audience for all objectives should just be assumed to be the students defined in the audience.