[ Music ] >> I want you to think on your own. Including the ones you just heard of, what are all the ways that you think that learning goals might be helpful to you as an instructor? So which of these would you say is not a key benefit of creating learning objectives?
I'd say that all of those things can be benefits of writing learning goals. Your exams may be easier to write. It can be a really good communication tool between instructors and students.
And it's true that goals can be specific to the content or really general across the course as a whole. Now writing learning goals really does pay off. This isn't just an exercise in order to, you know, tell somebody that you wrote goals for your course and then it's done.
It actually does help you in your instruction. So I asked some instructors how it's been helpful to them. You'll see Jenny Knight as well as three other instructors in Math and Physics.
[ Music ] >> I think also for the students, it's important to see how the ideas grow over time. And so when we're talking about the little objectives, we're talking about each week, what are they going to be learning and how do those ideas build on each other? So they see the coherency in the trajectory of the course.
>> I even tell students they should use the objectives as a review. So when they ask for a review sheet, I say, "Oh well, the objectives are your review. If you can do those things then you're ready for the test.
" So it's very clear what the expectations are. >> And I find they add a sense of fairness to the exams because when I'm writing exam questions, if the student says, "Where did that come from? " And I can point explicitly to a learning objective.
It all of a sudden doesn't seem -- even though they've never seen that question before which used to be a source of stress for students. I mean, the objective makes it easier for them to feel like that was a question I could have answered. >> Another way that I find that having those explicit learning objectives helps me is basically in the preparation of what I'm going to do in class.
So before I had them, I would think about the topic and then come up with some lecture to give. But now that I have the explicit learning goals well defined, then I can always refer back to that and it lets me weed out conversations about specific details or things that are just not aligned with my true learning objectives. >> Yeah, it's more targeted.
>> Yeah. >> So I want to talk about this particular thing in class because it allows them to achieve an understanding of that objective. >> Yeah, I can just use it for my time more efficiently and effectively, I think.
>> I find when talking with other faculty that having explicitly stated objectives makes it easier for us to make decisions, you know, when somebody's taking your course that I've just taught or I'm about to take over a course that somebody else has taught. I find it extremely helpful to have objectives written out because we sort of have this vague sense before objectives about what it was that this course was about and once it's explicated, it allows us to focus on the core of the course. >> Or even eliminate something that may be not everyone agrees is the most critical thing.
>> Now if you're a graduate teaching assistant and watching this video, you might be asking, "How can I use learning objectives? I'm not the instructor of record. I don't have control over the design of the course.
" So think on your own, again, before watching the rest of the video. How might you use learning objectives if you're a graduate TA? And if you're not a graduate TA, think about how you might advise a graduate TA that they could use learning objectives.
So I asked that same group of grad students that we saw on the first video how they think that they could use learning objectives as a graduate TA. And here they are. [ Music ] >> Every [inaudible] we're into be really transparent about the learning goals with your students like I'm always like my learning -- I'm very explicit at the beginning of the semester.
It doesn't mean I just TA lab so I [inaudible] my own course or anything but very explicit about learning goals for the entire lab. And then like each lab, they walk in like my outline slide is like my learning goals slide. So there's like very transparent with my learning goals for my students.
>> I mean a psychiatrist student, you can have your [inaudible] learning goals, you know like, if you are teaching lab, you can have your own goals for the lab. And what I was doing, I was doing office hours so I tried to fit what I want them to know after they leave office hours. >> Maybe just translating, you know, your professor's goals into actual goals or like you kind of know what it is they're doing because you've been doing this stuff for so long.
And you remember when you were taking those classes, you know, like what is it that you needed to know to get through, just translating that for the students based on, you know, how the professor is teaching. >> And I like that idea of like translating them because you are a lot closer to it. >> Our learning goals for each class was really where we started with these.
So like having really good solid learning goals is great when you're coming in as a faculty. You're applying to be a faculty member, you can say, "These are my learning goals. This is how I would do an assessment for this," because college doesn't really give you a lot of assessment.
And that's the first step is knowing what you want them to know so that we can figure out how you're going to find that they know these things. >> So the main objectives are something that you can use as a graduate TA and they can be really helpful in the positions in which you teach. But they can also be helpful for your applications for faculty positions.
So clearly, it's really useful to write learning objectives. But how do you actually use them in your course? In the next video, we're going to look at how learning objectives can really help to guide your instruction.
