by J. Clark Gardner, EdTech Dojo co-curator
If you are truly dedicated to having your students fritter away their time in your classroom learning as little as possible, it is absolutely imperative that you carefully create flimsy, worthless instructional goals.
The only way you can even more readily ensure that your students will come to the end of your course carrying away only a few scattered facts and abstract principles that they will have no hope of applying to a single real situation in their lives is to not bother making instructional goals at all.
But if you must make instructional goals, and want the time you spend teaching to be frustrating, aimless, and unfulfilling, follow these simple steps to ensure that your instructional goals are ineffectual in every way:
1) Go Vague or Go Home
Nothing makes an instructional goal so deliciously deficient as rambling, vague language that does little to connect the student with the material. "Learn about planets," "research the Civil War," and "study poetry," - these goals have that poetic ring of abstract uncertainly that successfully delivers a third-rate learning experience.
Avoid specific, learner-focused goals like "identify the eight planets and their order in the solar system," or "describe the events that lead up to the Civil War." This sort of cringe-worthy careful planning leads to internalization and application of the course material.
2) Abhor Application
Another way to make sure that your learners never take course content out of the classroom is to leave any type of critical thinking and application out of your instructional goals. The second you get your students thinking about the content in a way that applies to their own world is the second you are in danger of having them actually learn something. Keep your instructional goals focused on facts and abstract ideas, not on the learners.
3) Set 'em and Forget 'em
If you truly want your instructional goals to be pathetic and fruitless, set them and and forget them. Don't let them guide the design of your curriculum. Don't go back and fine-tune them throughout the process. And whatever you do, don't tell your students what the instructional goals are. Can you imagine what would happen if they knew what they were supposed to be learning? When learners have clear, well-communicated direction, they have a better chance at internalizing content in a meaningful way.
The next time you are designing a lesson and need to craft some truly pointless, inadequate instructional goals, I hope you will remember these three principles. If you make your goals vague, avoid any form of application in them, and forget they exist as soon as they are made, you will be well on your way to designing a forgettable curriculum that is a waste of everyone's time.
If you are truly dedicated to having your students fritter away their time in your classroom learning as little as possible, it is absolutely imperative that you carefully create flimsy, worthless instructional goals.
The only way you can even more readily ensure that your students will come to the end of your course carrying away only a few scattered facts and abstract principles that they will have no hope of applying to a single real situation in their lives is to not bother making instructional goals at all.
But if you must make instructional goals, and want the time you spend teaching to be frustrating, aimless, and unfulfilling, follow these simple steps to ensure that your instructional goals are ineffectual in every way:
1) Go Vague or Go Home
Nothing makes an instructional goal so deliciously deficient as rambling, vague language that does little to connect the student with the material. "Learn about planets," "research the Civil War," and "study poetry," - these goals have that poetic ring of abstract uncertainly that successfully delivers a third-rate learning experience.
Avoid specific, learner-focused goals like "identify the eight planets and their order in the solar system," or "describe the events that lead up to the Civil War." This sort of cringe-worthy careful planning leads to internalization and application of the course material.
2) Abhor Application
Another way to make sure that your learners never take course content out of the classroom is to leave any type of critical thinking and application out of your instructional goals. The second you get your students thinking about the content in a way that applies to their own world is the second you are in danger of having them actually learn something. Keep your instructional goals focused on facts and abstract ideas, not on the learners.
3) Set 'em and Forget 'em
If you truly want your instructional goals to be pathetic and fruitless, set them and and forget them. Don't let them guide the design of your curriculum. Don't go back and fine-tune them throughout the process. And whatever you do, don't tell your students what the instructional goals are. Can you imagine what would happen if they knew what they were supposed to be learning? When learners have clear, well-communicated direction, they have a better chance at internalizing content in a meaningful way.
The next time you are designing a lesson and need to craft some truly pointless, inadequate instructional goals, I hope you will remember these three principles. If you make your goals vague, avoid any form of application in them, and forget they exist as soon as they are made, you will be well on your way to designing a forgettable curriculum that is a waste of everyone's time.
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