I’m uncomfortable assuming the learner can “explain” whatever once the training has been completed. Does anyone have established standards that I can share with my group to support achievable objectives within the event vs supposing the learner will be able to do something?

Started by Kim Bahr

Louis Dusa said:  If you have an objective that says explain ABC.... or describe XYZ... could you not use an evaluative short answer question to determine if they can or cannot explain the objective? When a teacher asks a student to explain something they usally are looking for some sort of an explanation in the students own words. If an elearning developer is going to require such a strategy they really need to have a way to evaluate the explanation to ensure the objective is met. There are ways to take short anwer data and have it stored for retrival later or even instantly emailed to a course owner who can evaluate the response.

It's hard to have open ended questions such as these but not impossible. Personally I don't like to use the "explain" word in an elearning objective. I might try something like "identify a valid explanation of...." Its easier to write trhe evaluative question for your exam that way.

I have done course in the past that were blended where portions of the course were elearning but the entire test was not. In those cases it was pretty easy to write the "describe objective" because part of the evaluation was a practical where they were asked to describe a particular action in their own words. That portion of the course was completed in a classroom.

Joe Kirby said: I would recommend you check out Gagne, Briggs and Wager, "The Principles of Instructional Design". Gagne, in particular limited the verbs used to prepare objectives. Discriminate, identify, classify, demonstrate, generate,adopts, states,,executes, chooses were some of his favorites.

Robert Mager wrote a classic how to guide: "Preparing Instructional Objectives". Mager may not be a rigourous as Gagne but he is more simple in his approach.

When I supervised instructional designers, I made sure they each had a copy of Mager.

17 comments - Jump to most recent