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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
Welcome to the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. We seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices. Thanks for joining our conversation.
Jared:Welcome back to Trans Transform Your Teaching here on the campus of Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. My name is Jared Piles, and with me is Doctor. Robert McDowell. We are seeking to give you best practices when it comes to your instruction, be it face to face or online or hybrid or HyFlex or whatever else terminology they come up with over the next decade of teaching. But we wanted to start you off with this school year, this fall semester, assuming you're listening to this as they are released.
Jared:If not, they're good to listen to no matter what day or what time you listen.
Rob:Anytime. Anytime,
Jared:really. But we are going to go back to the basics. We're gonna talk about some basic elements of instruction that you need to make sure your teaching is effective. And then once we get through the basics, we're going to revisit and do advanced versions of these topics. But we are starting our series with probably the most important no, not probably, it is the most important part of teaching and learning objectives.
Jared:So let's talk about objectives, doctor Robert McDowell.
Rob:That sounds good.
Jared:Let's dive right into it.
Rob:Let's do it. So let me start with a statement. If you aim to hit at nothing, you'll hit it every time.
Jared:Okay. I gotta write that down. Hold on. It's really deep.
Rob:If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.
Jared:You aim I can't type with this microphone in my face. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. Okay.
Rob:Got it. Yeah. It's a good thing to start with to start talking about objectives because objectives are what we aim at in our course. As you and I were talking about this before doing this this podcast, we also talked about what's a good analogy. So how what would translate well for everybody to understand where we could take those basics?
Rob:And it it truly is basics. We're not gonna cover everything today. We don't have time. You know, you and I have spent quite a few hours in the classroom on online, face to face, all of it.
Jared:Textbooks haven't been written on objectives.
Rob:Yeah. That are We
Jared:can't do it in twenty five minutes.
Rob:No. It's just not possible. So if there's somebody out there that's hoping that's gonna happen, I'm sorry. But what we do hope we can do for you is provide a basis that will stick in your head and give you points to move from. And so in doing that, we really thought about the analogy of taking a road trip.
Rob:That's something that we've all done. I know when I was a kid, you know, I've crossed the country several times. There's a Johnny Cash song in there somewhere. On the road again?
Jared:No. Not that one.
Rob:Oh, no. Who's that? Doesn't matter. Anyway, I digress. You're gonna have to cut that out.
Jared:Willie Nelson is a year thing.
Rob:Willie Nelson. Yes. Anywho's, a good course starts with where you wanna end. Right? Writing that down too.
Rob:A good course starts with where you wanna end. Where do you want your students to end? What do you want them to look like? What do you want them to think, feel, and do? So that's kinda like the end destination.
Rob:And let's say, for instance, it's to go to San Francisco where, you know, from Dayton, Ohio or more specifically, Cedarville, Ohio because specificity in your objectives matters.
Jared:That's true. That's very true.
Rob:So one of the things that I like to use here, we're gonna use an acronym. I'm gonna say the word drive.
Jared:D r I v
Rob:e? Drive.
Jared:Drive. Okay.
Rob:Yes.
Jared:Alright. Hit me Drive. With
Rob:Let's start. It needs to be definable, and that's what we were really talking about. You need to define where you're headed. Not just where you're headed, but how you get there. Right?
Rob:So you know the end goal in mind, but you need to also know the steps. We called them, I think, at one point, we were talking about milestones. So, like, for instance, if you were leaving for Cedarville and you were gonna go towards San Francisco, what's one of the first major cities you'd probably go through?
Jared:Cincinnati.
Rob:You could. You can get definitely go through Cincinnati.
Jared:Right.
Rob:Or you can get up on 70, and you can And end up? End up in Saint Louis.
Jared:Yeah. You pass through Indiana first.
Rob:Right. Yeah. I'm just saying that's a major milestone.
Jared:There you go.
Rob:But this illustrates even that whole idea of figuring out steps. Right? Right. When you look at a map, there are multiple routes to get to San Francisco. Right.
Rob:And what you're trying to accomplish, how much time you have a lot of times nowadays, we have a GPS and we say, take us if we say, take us to San Francisco, it usually gives you, like, three routes, you know. And then you can say, well, I wanna avoid tolls. Right?
Jared:So I don't
Rob:I don't wanna I don't wanna have to pay money, extra money.
Jared:Correct.
Rob:And or you could say, I want the most scenic route, you know, or I wanna go on Route 66. Who knows? Yeah. So you need to define those things, not just for your end goal in mind or your overall course objectives as we would say that. We would we would say you also need to define those steps.
Rob:A lot of times those end up being modules for us Correct. Or smaller units of some sort that are really should be like the bottom level objectives. They're actionable. They're easily accessible and and accessible. And they start with verbs.
Rob:So defining those things, you know, making them action oriented. And and that goes back to being results oriented. So drive, define it, are results oriented. That's really the actionable verb area. You know, if I say I mean, give me an objective that's not really results oriented.
Jared:Students will discuss x in this module.
Rob:So how do I measure discuss? What do we mean by that? I I think, you know, it's kind of vague. Right? Kinda like the word understand.
Rob:You know? Students will understand. Well, what what in what way will they understand? What do you mean by that? How do I know when they've understood according to your definition?
Rob:So you have to define those things. And a lot of times, they're better verbs, and we'll have some of those notes in the in the show notes, right, for Bloom's taxonomy, especially the revised Bloom's. I would point to that, and we'll have some links to that, that give you better verbs, actionable verbs, for things like understanding.
Jared:Yeah. I would say, just to pause on that for a second, that is probably the number one thing that I see coming into my office as instructional designer when I meet with faculty and talk with them about building the course or whatever it is, objectives, the verb in the objectives is usually very vague. And it takes a while to, you know, it's important to keep a verb specific because doing that makes it so much easier for you when you get to that end or the milestones along the way to assess. Because if you're saying understand, that could be a world of different things. But if you're saying something more specific in blooms like identify or, I can't think of another one on top, but identify is probably more really, really common for early.
Jared:Stuff something like that that's more specific, it makes it so much easier for you and your students as you go through the course.
Rob:Right. Totally agree. And just just to kinda quickly rehash. Definable, we've got two different layers already. Right?
Rob:We've got the overall end goal, and then we've also got the steps to get there. So Right. Just keeping that in mind, and I think keeping a a road trip in mind helps helps to remind the listener about those things. And then they also need to be actionable. Right?
Rob:If I say to you, okay. I just want you to go to Cincinnati. Okay. Student will be able to go to Cincinnati.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:Okay. Well, how do you want them to go? Right? Well, how are they gonna be successful? And where in Cincinnati?
Rob:Because, like, Cincinnati is pretty big, so you need to be specific, especially if you need to pick something up in Cincinnati like a friend. Right? You actually need their address. Mhmm. Right?
Rob:You need to know when they're gonna be there. So timing is really crucial. You wanna make sure that you're putting your objectives in the right order, you know, so that you get the right results. Again, results oriented.
Jared:Yeah. I think a great example of this is here on our campus when people type in Cedarville University, it brings them to our building. So a very vague, I mean, they show up to our building and they're like, where is this building? Like, well, this clearly isn't it. So I would think that's a good observation there is that, you know, keeping it vague is not ideal.
Jared:You wanna be very specific. Well, where on campus do you want them to go? Mhmm. Right. How do you want them to get there?
Rob:Correct. And as you're going, you know, whenever you're on a road trip, it's always good to have some good road trip music, you know, because you want you want some inspiration because you got some long miles to go. Right? There's gotta be some sort of theme maybe sometimes, or you'll just be like me as a kid and sleep the whole way. But it needs to be inspiring.
Rob:So d, definable. R, results oriented. I, inspirational or inspiring. Your objective should do something to paint a picture to the student because that's what you're doing. You're you're rough you're roughly painting something for them so that way when they read some of these objectives, they're like, yeah, that's that's a step along the way of what I wanna do.
Rob:Yeah. I wanna do that.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:So that kinda that kinda just inspiration and and the next one is validity. You know, it needs to be valid. The the objective actually needs to be real. I know that seems kind of silly to say, but, you know, is this really a valid objective that, you know, we should really focus on. Those are things and I'm I'm trying to think maybe you've got a good one since you've been doing a lot of course reviews and stuff recently is like and obviously, you're gonna have to, on the fly, scrub any way of understanding what we're what you were talking about or who you were referring to.
Jared:So Alright. Well, then I have to pick one that we built. Okay.
Rob:Oh, you're gonna have to pick on us. Alright.
Jared:That's good. If you want an example of an objective, here's one that I just finished building with a US History one professor. Do it. Here's one. Identify key people and events of United States history from the colonial period through the Reconstruction era.
Rob:That is great.
Jared:Right? I know.
Rob:Yeah. That's valid.
Jared:Why is it valid, Rob?
Rob:It it's valid because it aligns with the course content and, you know, the assignments and assessments because you're going to more than likely, one would hope in a history, one course, actually review those things. Right? So it it it it it's valid. Now if if we were said, identify all the king's horses and all the king's men who couldn't put George Washington back together again, don't know if that's valid.
Jared:It's a little vague. Or you could just say, I think adding the word so if we're looking at this objective again, identify key people and events. It doesn't say identify people and events. Key people and events. So it's even narrowed down that much to where it's like, we're not asking you to identify everyone that and everything that happened between colonial period and Reconstruction era, but key people and events.
Jared:Yeah. A little more specific there.
Rob:Right. You could probably go even more specific, like, with the definition of what do we mean by key. Key in what in what way. Right. But I think, to your point, you're gonna you're gonna do that in the modules.
Rob:You'll you'll you'll show what you mean by your module objectives, which I'm pretty sure we did.
Jared:We did.
Rob:And so there is that, like, ongoing thing. If it's not specific in one, it should be specific in a level down.
Jared:Right. And you can tell from this objective without knowing what the course is. You could tell specifically what this course is about. You might not know the name of the course, but you know the dates, you know enough to get a good grasp on what this course is going to be about.
Rob:So validity in a simple way is just, you know, is it valid? In other words, does it actually fit with the course content? Yeah. Does it fit what students should be doing in the course? And if it doesn't, then you got a whole another course.
Rob:Right? I've seen that. I've seen that in places where, you know, you look at the title of the course and you you read it, and then all of sudden you get into it and you're like, wait a minute. This isn't a US History one. This is really only focused on one particular era, which, you know, like the revolution.
Rob:I'm not saying that happened here. It didn't didn't happen at Cedarville, but I've seen that before. Right. So it's not really valid for the title of the course. It needs to fit.
Rob:Right? Right. And it needs to fit in the overall curriculum as well. These things get applied to the curriculum as well as just the course and then the assignment assessment levels.
Jared:Right.
Rob:The last part is evidence, e for evidence. So drive, definable, results oriented. It should be something that inspires, should be valid in the words that fits. And then finally, we should actually be able to point to something to say, hey, look, see, we did actually meet our objectives. For now, I think for our listeners, it's just a good idea to keep in mind drive.
Rob:Think of a long journey that you're gonna take, maybe across the country or somewhere else, And remember those things, those basics, and I think there's so much more you could do. So much more and we'll have some resources and stuff for folks, but hopefully, this just gives an anchor.
Jared:Yeah. A couple things I would add on to your drive is, what a great thing about a GPS is that if you miss a waypoint or a milestone along
Rob:the
Jared:way, if you miss a turn, what's the GPS going to do? Recalculate. It's going to recalculate. It's going to redirect you either back towards that milestone or help you meet the next milestone. Right.
Jared:So if you think about that as far as module objectives and assessments, which we'll talk about in our next episode, you as an instructor can see that they've missed a turn along the way and you can readjust and redirect them.
Rob:Right. And I think that's excellent because it really it's really designing and being prepared for whatever comes in or whoever comes into your class regardless of, you know, the the turns they've made
Jared:Right.
Rob:In their academic career towards you. Right. If you can identify those things because you've been more specific about the journey in your class, it makes providing resources or pointing them in the right way. You know, we'll talk about how to manage this and, you know, instructional management in in one of our episodes upcoming. But having these objectives is super, super important for for instructional management.
Jared:One more thing I would say about objective before we finish this is that something else that I see vague verbs is one thing. Another thing is using objectives as summary statements. Whereas the, I think the and I used to do this a lot when I taught, high school was I would see objectives as, okay, here's a summary of what we're going to do today, or here's a summary of what we're going to do this week. So I would use verbs like discuss, or I would do things like understand, or I would do learn as big one that I see as well. And those aren't objectives.
Jared:You should think of objectives, especially module level objectives, of what they're going to be able to do at the end of the week or the end of the module or the end of class or whatever that is. So it's that's why the students will be able to sentence them that people put in front of objectives is good because you if you do, students will be able to learn blah blah blah. You're not assessing what they learn, you're assessing how they learn. So if you say instead, students will be able to list or apply or summarize or identify, that's more specific to what it is they're going to be able to do by the end of the module or the course. Right.
Jared:You know? So, they're not summary statements. They're end statements for here's what the students should be able to do by the end of this Correct. Length of time, whatever it is.
Rob:Yeah. I think those are great additions, and I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying. And I think we'll see more of that as we go into later episodes and what we're going to be talking about.
Jared:Well, literally a part two to this episode, we're gonna talk about assessments next because objectives are nothing without a good assessment, and a good assessment is nothing without a good objective. So we'll talk about that next. Next time we meet on Transform Your Teaching.
Narrator:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the transform your teaching podcast. Please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcast platform. For more information, you can email us at CTLpodcast@cedarville.edu. Please consider subscribing to our blog, Focus, found at cedarville.edu/focusblog.