Learning Goals¶
In this chapter, you will find guidelines for a key part of any preparation: learning goals. I want to illustrate how developing learning goals gets you a lot of improvement for little work. Here is why: Often you start planning with a syllabus, a list of topics. For instance, your syllabus could contain the topic
for loops
You could start putting together a lesson that covers everything that you consider important about for loops. You could generate a list of keywords, presentation material and exercises. However, focusing on the content alone makes it very easy to miss what your students need. for loops is a topic, not a learning goal.
You could try to formulate the desired outcome instead:
The students understand for loops
However, this goal is not very useful in practice. You cannot look into a students’ heads and see whether they understood anything. Your personal impression is hard to interpret, and a clean method to assess students’ knowledge is hard to find. As a goal, “understanding” is not specific, it is not testable and hard to communicate. Essentially, it is a wordy version of the topic from the syllabus.
Write testable learning goals¶
Let’s borrow another analogy from programming: Write a Unit Test for your lesson. Here is a learning goal that is both specific and testable:
The students use a for loop
to draw multiple squares
Now you can use the goal to check whether your lesson is working. Coming by a students computer, you will see whether there are multiple squares on the screen. If yes, your Unit Test passes. The lesson is working. If not, you know you need to provide extra support.
But it gets even better: a good learning goal is specific enough that students can assess themselves. You could give them the information:
The goal of this lesson is that you draw multiple squares with a for loop.
Knowing the goal gives students something to strive for. You give them the chance to reach the goal by themselves. If they do, the go home with the feeling of accomplishment. Also, if students can self-check, you have more time to help people. A single, well-crafted learning goal may power an entire lesson.
Adjust Difficulty¶
A great thing about testable learning goals is that the same goal works for participants with varying skill levels. Of course, you can make the task itself more or less difficult:
difficulty |
example |
|---|---|
easy |
write a for loop that calls the |
medium |
write a for loop that draws 10 squares in random positions. |
hard |
write two nested for loops creating a matrix of sqares |
Alternatively, you can provide more or fewer hints. See faded_examples for more ways to adjust difficulty.
How many goals should a lesson have?¶
For a lesson of 45-90 minutes, one learning goal is sufficient. For an entire training day, you could plan 3-5 goals. Set these goals so that they fit logically, e.g. topics or activities that structure the day. You find a list of possible activities in Planning well-balanced Courses.
However, if your day involves an intense practical part where students work by themselves you may want to give them a set of micro-goals that guide them through the process.
Should you communicate goals to the students?¶
Yes it helps to communicate one goal at the start of the lesson. This is a great way to motivate the group. However, if you have doubts whether your lesson is going to work, you might leave the lesson more open-ended, so that there is less pressure on you.
Do you need a goal for every lesson?¶
Setting a good learning goals is difficult when teaching a topic for the first time. Sometimes, your goal will be “survive the lesson and see how things work”. With more confidence in the subject, you may have goals where your students achieve more and more.
Learning goals are like Unit Tests¶
You can think of well-written learning goals as Unit Tests for your lesson. If your students reach the goal, the test passes. If the test fails, you know that you need to change your approach, e.g. to provide extra hints.
Taken together, writing specific, testable goals helps you to:
communicate to students what they are expected to do
check the outcome of your lesson; you will see whether your participants achieve the goal or not
let participants self-check their own progress
prepare material - everything that your students need to achieve the goal
adjust a lesson for multiple audiences and heterogenous groups.