Reading Material for Lesson 4.1 Lesson Plan
6. Instruction and Instructional objective
6.4. Essential ingredients of instructional objectives
Learning is a process. This process of learning is mostly internal. The effect of learning is exhibited by changes in behaviour. We infer that the learning takes place as a result of change in behaviour.
Thus, objectives or instructional objectives are stated in terms of external behaviour exhibited by the learner that are measurable.
Objectives are therefore useful to decide what to learn and what to measure and to find out how much has been learnt by the learner.
A training objective must be a clear, precise statement of what a learner will be able to do at the end of training (Instruction). They are far more than goals; and must be stated as ingredients in instructional objectives. They are:
Performance
Statement of what a trainee should be able to do perform at the end of the learning session. (terminal behaviour)
Condition
The objective describes the condition under which a trainee should be able to perform the task to exhibit the terminal behaviour.
Standard
The standard to which he should be able to perform (the criteria) of the skill. How well the task/behaviour must be performed to meet the standard.
An example of writing objectives
“The trainee should be able to find the square root of any number, using logarithm tables, and answers correct to three significant figures, nine times out of ten” - This is a precise statement, using unambiguous terms. This can be stated as the terminal performance that is measurable.
Many words represent either vague or ambiguous concepts and cannot be precisely measured. So, one should avoid using such words.
Ambiguous terms
Knows, understands, appreciates, grasps, enjoys, believes, have faith in etc.
Words which permit fewer interpretations
Writes, recites, indentifies, distinguishes, differentiates, solves, constructs, lists, enumerates, compares, contrasts, defines, states, recongizes, demonstrates, locates, labels, measures, categories, detects, operates, etc.