Needs, goals and objectives

Needs, goals and objectives

1. Goals: should usually focus on what the program hopes to accomplish in the future, and particularly on what the students should be able to do when they leave the program.

   • A curriculum will be often organized around the goals of the program.

2. Institutional objectives: are defined as specific statements that describe the particular knowledge, behaviors, and skills that the learner will be expected to know or perform at the end of the course or program.

   • • Performance (what the learner will be able to do) • Conditions (important conditions under which the performance is expected to occur) • Criterion (the quality or level of the performance that will be considered acceptable)

3. From goals toward objectives: once objectives are in hand, the basic elements of the student’s need can be analyzed, assessed, and classified to create a coherent teaching/leaning experience.

   • • Examine the needs of the students as discovered and presented in the needs analysis documents. • State the needs of the students in terms of realizable goals for the program • Narrow the scope of resulting goals statements.

4. Sources of ideas for objectives

   • The literature
     • Taxonomies: the cognitive domain was defined and outlined in 1956 by Bloom, whose book has become the standard model for such taxonomies, particularly as they relate to the cognitive domain.
       • The affective domain: refers to those aspects of learning that are related to feelings, emotions, degrees of acceptance, values, biases and so forth.

5. Sound instructional objectives

   • • Distinguish between curriculum goals and institutional objectives • Recognize complete or incomplete institutional objectives • Recognize vaguely stated institutional objectives as well as clearly stated ones. • Write clear and complete performance objectives

6. Subject: the subject of an objective may vary considerably, and while this only be a necessary consideration at the beginning of the objectives, specification process, it is still important.

   • Performance: it should focus on what learners can do with the language
     • Conditions: “to perform” will only occur when the conditions that surround the performance are described.
       • Measure: how the performance will be observed or tested.
         • Criterion: the level of accuracy that will be considered sufficient to succeed or pass.

7. Pros and cons of curriculum objectives:

   • • Some things just cannot be quantified • Objectives trivialize instructions • Objectives curtail a teacher’s freedom • Language learned cannot be expressed in objectives.