Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2014 | Page 13

Internet Learning
be included in the instructional sequence
or materials of the course are referred to as
entry skills or prerequisite skills; these are
requirements for learners before they begin
the course of study. Refer to Figure 2 for
a visual breakdown of these objectives and
entry skills in the “Foundations of Peanut
Butter Jelly Sandwiches” course.
Put simply, the conversation that
needs to take place with the instructor-expert
involves asking what, broadly, learners
should be able to accomplish once they finish
the course, as well as what learners need
to be able to do, specifically, to accomplish
those behaviors, including what will and
will not be taught in the course. Based on
this conversation, course and module objectives
can be determined without bringing
Bloom’s Taxonomy into the conversation.
Practical Application
An analysis of terminal (course) objectives,
enabling (unit/module)
objectives, and prerequisite skills is
a useful tool in working with faculty, but
a QM review looks at courses, not at objective
analysis in the wild. What does this
breakdown translate to in “real life”? Figure
3 depicts a unit of the “Peanut Butter
and Jelly Sandwich” course deployed in the
Blackboard Learning Management system.
This unit is framed around the first terminal
objective (“select appropriate ingredients”)
and is called “Module 1: Selecting Your Ingredients.”
After a brief introduction to the
module, the course objective addressed in
this module is listed, followed by a list of
that module’s specific objectives. This layout
is sufficient to satisfy QM Standards.
Common Scenarios
The typical scenarios faced by instructional
designers and faculty
trainers who work with instructor-experts
to compose learning objectives
can be categorized into five types. Each of
these scenarios has a recommended course
of action based on the terminal/enabling
objective breakdown.
Scenario 1: Faculty member already has
well-written, measureable objectives.
Given a scenario in which a faculty
member or instructor-expert comes to
the table with well-written, measureable,
and appropriate objectives, the job of the
instructional designer or faculty trainer is
simple: commend the instructor-expert on
the achievement, and provide any further
support as needed. This scenario, however
rare, does exist, typically with faculty who
either have a background in education or
have attended an Applying the QM Rubric
training.
The remaining scenarios are more
common.
Scenario 2: Faculty member needs help
writing new course objectives.
In this scenario, perhaps the faculty
member is preparing a new course
or a currently running course doesn’t already
have objectives (obviously the latter
is not the most ideal scenario given good
instructional design practice). In either
case, the recommended action is to ask the
instructor-expert, “What can students do,
after taking your course, that they couldn’t
do before?” The answer to this question
leads to a discussion of the terminal or
course-level objectives.
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