Lesson 3: Planning Webinar Instruction

1. Introduction

Let's start with a scenario.

Sam's approach to training design emphasizes knowing. The thought is that students need to know what the instructor knows. In contrast, an approach based on instructional design principles focuses is on what students will be able to do at the end of the instruction.

2. Overview

In this lesson, you will learn how to:

• Plan a webinar that focuses on what the learner will be able to do after completing the instruction.
• Write an instructional goal statement.
• Write learning objectives that describe what students must do to demonstrate the accomplishment of the instructional goal.

3. Writing a Goal Statement

A goal statement is a broad statement describing the new skills, knowledge, or attitudes the learner will acquire from the instruction. This statement is important because it will guide all your design decisions.

A complete goal statement should include information about the following components:

1. Who the learners are
2. What the learners will be able to do
3. The performance context in which the learners will apply the skills they learn
4. The tools that will be available to the learners in the performance context

A goal statement for this lesson could be : (the four components are indicated by the number in parenthesis)

Technical subject matter experts (1) will be able to plan a learner-centered webinar (2) on their chosen topic (3) using guidelines for writing a goal statement and learning objectives (4).

A goal statement for a webinar about the Lustre File System could be:

Computational scientists who are novice users of the Lustre File System will be able to use basic commands that enable parallel I/O in their computing application. They will have access to a high-performance computing system with a Lustre File System and documentation of basic Lustre commands.

Write a goal statement for a webinar you would like to create. You will use it later in the course.

4. Writing Learning Objectives

The next step in planning your webinar is to write your learning objectives. 

A learning objective is a specific statement describing a measurable learning outcome of instruction.

By measurable, it means that you can observe when or if students achieve the objective. For example, a learning objective could state, "students will be able to log into a high-performance computing resource." You can observe that it happened by watching them do it or by having them submit some sort of artifact such as a screen capture to show that they did it successfully.

Learning objectives are derived by breaking your instructional goal into specific statements describing what learners must do to achieve it. The previous learning objective "students will be able to log into a high-performance computing resource" would be one of several for the instructional goal "use a high-performance computing resource." Others might be:

• Create a strong password
• Transfer files
• Customize the computing environment using Modules

Learning objectives are also called performance objectives, behavioral objectives, and instructional objectives. Robert Mager first used the term behavioral objective in 1975 to describe what the learner was able to do after instruction. In time, educators disliked the behavioral orientation and used the other terms to satisfy their preferences.

Read the following article explaining Robert Mager's learning objectives:
Robert Mager's Performance-based Learning Objectives

4.1. Using Blooms Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a tool used by educators to classify the skills they will teach. It is a hierarchical model that classifies skills into six levels: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. You can use it to select the verbs used to describe your learner's performance.

Watch the following video on Bloom's Taxonomy and how to use it to write learning objectives:

4.2. Four Steps for Writing Learning Objectives

Next, we'll use four steps to write learning objectives for this lesson's instructional goal. 

Technical subject matter experts will be able to plan a learner-centered webinar on their chosen topic using guidelines for writing a goal statement and learning objectives.

Step 1: Start with a stem sentence.

Step 2: Determine the learning outcome.

Step 3: Consult Bloom's Wheel to select the appropriate level and verb.

Step 4: Write the verb and learning outcome into a statement that, when combined with the stem, forms a complete sentence.

Don't worry. You do not need to be an expert in writing learning objectives to design your webinar. The purpose of writing them is to make you think about what your learners will be able to do when they have completed your webinar. The value of consulting Bloom's taxonomy is that it makes you think about what it will take for them to be successful. You can then use this information to help you decide what and how you are going to teach them to do it.

To see how complex writing learning objectives can be, take a look at the objectives identified for the online Lustre tutorial used for some of the examples in this course - Lustre Performance Objectives. You will also see how these objectives have been aligned to a post-test used to assess learning in the course. This gives you an idea of how learning objectives are used to guide the development of your instructional materials.

4.3. Practice

Write learning objectives derived from the goal statement you wrote in the previous section. Consult the Bloom's Taxonomy to select your verbs. [Bloom's Wheel or Table of verbs]

4.4. Further Study

The following resources are suggested if you want to know more about writing goal statements and learning objectives:

• Goal Analysis: How to Clarify Your Goals So You Can Actually Achieve Them
• Preparing Instructional Objectives: A Critical Tool in the Development of Effective Instruction
• A Quick Reference Guide to Developing Cognitive Learning Objectives
  
• Module 4: Design (P1: Instructional Objectives)
• Terminal and Enabling Objectives

In addition, writing learning objectives is a popular instructional design topic so you can find many more useful resources by conducting an Internet or library search.

5. Summary

In this lesson, you learned how to write a goal statement and learning objectives to describe what your learners will be able to do once they complete your webinar. You did this by first writing your goal statement and then writing learning objectives to describe what learners would need to do to show they achieved the goal.

Strict adherence to the rules for writing both instructional goals and learning objectives may not be practical when designing your webinar. Your ultimate goal is to answer the question “What will learners be able to do after completing my webinar?” This goal differs from the teacher-centered approach described in the beginning scenario where Sam asked: “What do I want to teach about this topic?”

Note: The instructional design process is very adaptable. You may find that once you begin developing your instructional content that your learning objectives, or even your instructional goal, aren't really want you want. This is perfectly acceptable, just revise them and continue with your design.

6. Self-Test

Check your understanding of the material presented in this lesson.

Take the Lesson 3 Self-Test