Introduction to Resource Guide and Objectives

Authoring a Resource Guide

The challenge for most of us as facilitators in our classrooms is to cater to the diverse needs of our learners, to deal with their different learning abilities and at the same time ensuring that the required timelines are met and the syllabus is completed.

A Resource Guide helps us plan for a session keeping in mind the challenges so as to ensure an effective and engaging session. It helps us plan every aspect of delivering a session, starting from stating the objectives of the session to the suggested flow and the methodology that can be adopted for conducting a session. It also helps us identify the learner intelligences that we are able to tap and the levels of learning that we are able to make our learners acquire.

This series titled “Authoring a Resource Guide” would acquaint us with various sections of a resource guide and will also provide guidelines on authoring a resource guide.

The first topic in the series titled “Setting Objectives” would provide guidelines on setting objectives in an effective manner.

  

Setting Objectives

A learning objective sets the context of a course or a session. It specifies what the learner will accomplish and acquire by the end of the course/session.

An objective should always be SMART:

An objective needs to be stated by always qualifying it with an action verb, for example:

• Define ....
• Identify the need of .....
• List the advantages of ......
• Propose the solution of .......

An incorrect usage of the same would be:

• Definition
• Identification
• Listing
• Proposing

Ensure that the objective is always measurable and the learner can be tested on the basis of the same. For example, even though Understand and Appreciate are action verbs, they are not measurable and hence cannot be used.

Encourage learning at various levels. Make a conscious effort to take the learners from the Remembering, Understanding and Applying levels to Analyzing, Evaluating and Creating Levels wherever possible. For example:

• Define .......                                // this verb is at remembering level
• Identify the need for .......           // this verb is at analysing level
• List the advantages of .......       // this verb is at remembering level
• Propose .......                          // this verb is at creating level

To know more about the various learning levels, you may refer to the Bloom’s Taxonomy presentation. To know more on the subject, also refer to the associated podcast. Link Here

Having understood how to set SMART objectives, please set objectives for a topic and send it at mission.10x@wipro.com. We encourage you to provide your thoughts and views on this entry.