Speaker 1: Now, in this module, we're focusing on the topic level learning objectives. We're going to leave goals behind for the moment and really focus on writing objectives for your topics. So one of the things that's important is that your objectives should match your assessments, right? In that frustrated student case, we saw that maybe what the instructor expected students to do wasn't really coming through on the homework and on the exams. So let's do an example with the fairy tale of the three little pigs. It's a little bit of a silly example maybe, but it's really accessible to all of us across different disciplines to illustrate what it means to align your exams and your goal. So to remind you of the story, three little pigs go out to seek their fortune in the world and the first builds a house of straw. A big bad wolf comes to the door, says, little pig, little pig, let me come in. Little pig says, no, no, no, not by the hair on my chinny, chin, chin. And the big bad wolf says, then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in. And he blows the house over. The second pig has built a house of sticks and the wolf blows that one down too. But the third little pig was cleverer and he built a house of bricks. The wolf comes down the chimney into a pot of boiling water that the little pig has placed there and then the wolf runs away. All right. So let's think about what kind of exam question could assess some learning objectives in this fairy tale. Here's one objective I might have for this fairy tale. Describe the main characters in the story and their roles. So think on your own for just a minute. What kind of exam questions might you ask that would assess that objective? Here are some choices. See which one you think best applies. So I'd say that the answer to this one is A. Students write a one-paragraph plot summary. That's going to really test whether they got the main point of the story in a way that's not identical to the learning objective. That is, if I just write an exam question that's the exact same as the learning objective, then I've kind of given away what my assessment is going to be. Note that B and C require the student to have achieved this objective, but it really goes a step beyond the just achievement of that objective. Now let's go the other way around. Which learning objective is assessed by this exam question? Here's an exam question. Write your own fable that uses the rule of threes. So what learning objective would this be testing? Here's some choices. See which one you think best applies. So let's look this over. So students certainly do need to explain the usefulness of rule of threes in order to be able to use the rule of threes, and they should probably be able to defend the use of rule of threes if they're going to use it. But really, those aren't necessarily that closely aligned with that exam question. I'd say that really C, students can apply the literary techniques in their own writing, is what's being assessed by that exam question. And notice again, the question and the objective aren't identical. Now this was a really limited example using the three little pigs and just learning objectives around this one story, but the same principles apply in your courses. So now how does this alignment of instruction, exams, and learning objectives really work out in practice? I want you to hear again from that same group of instructors and education specialists about what they think.

Speaker 2: I found myself going backwards. So I have some activity that I really like, and so I'm starting then to think about what learning goal could that activity have been addressing so that I could then write an exam question which would be appropriate. And I'm not sure whether that's really the appropriate way to be doing it. It's what happens to me in practice sometimes.

Speaker 3: Right. Well, I guess if you reflect on it, and it turns out that when you write the objective or even the larger scale goal for that activity, if it actually is something important to you, you go, oh yeah, that is important. Great. Excellent. It does allow students to achieve that objective.

Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think with the activities that are already there, you can take your learning objectives and look at your activities and make some tweaks to the activities, like not necessarily only finding out, like deciding which learning objectives they are addressing, but how can I possibly add a question so it helps address this activity, or how can I just tweak it a little bit?

Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think another thing that comes up sometimes for faculty who haven't done this before is if you put everything in a little chart and you have your objective and you have your in-class activity and then you have your assessment, what they'll sometimes say is, these all look the same. Like, how am I just teaching to the test because I know what my assessment question is going to be? And so I think that's another challenge in talking to instructors is, well, the assessment does need to be at the same level as whatever you worked on in the class and it has to address objective, but it doesn't have to be the same kind of question. Like it can have a different cover story or it can come from the opposite direction, depending on how it could have been taught this way and you then assess it that way, if that makes sense. Or it could kind of require combining two of the learning objectives into one. That's a good point, too. The assessment itself might be broader than a single objective.

Speaker 2: And I struggle when some of my objectives are kind of high level. So what I want is for my students to be able to analyze some situation that's broader than a specific and then I'm really having a hard time coming up with a way of testing whether they've achieved this goal. So there are times when I'm struggling to align what I think I want my students to take away with what I can reasonably evaluate in some sort of standard test situation.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And sometimes you need to have the multiple measures then, right? You need to have your standardized test, but also maybe some kind of formative test that you're doing in class and try to think of how many different ways can I help them to show what they know.

Speaker 1: So I'd like to pose a discussion question to you. I want you to think about a transformational or positive experience you had in course. Something that really affected you deeply. And think about what this experience, what it tells you about what you value in education. And when you compare the experience that you chose to the experience that other people choose in response to this question, how do you differ from others? How do your values in education differ from others? And then think about how might you use this information in a teaching statement. So your learning objectives really do help drive your instruction and your assessment. But that alignment takes some thought. What also takes some thought is what goes into having a student understand a particular topic. What it means for students to gain mastery in that area. That's going to be the topic of the next video.