Become a resource person and facilitator in this process. With larger groups, this is hard to do.
We need to think of our learners as active participants in the design of instruction. The amount of responsibility they take depends to some extent on their maturity, experience, and self-directedness. Students with less experience or background can surprise us with their interest and involvement in planning for learning for learning when we give them a chance to participate.
Summary
Objectives help students and instructors understand where they are headed in the teaching and learning process. They need not be restrictive or constraining; they need not prevent us from following exciting tangents or changing directions. They are merely statements we use to clarify for others and ourselves what we think we are doing in our classroom, workshop, seminars, and training programs. As such, they provide the basis for organizing topics into resources, and evaluating what has been learned. Sometimes we may end up reaching an unforeseen goal, and sometimes this indeed may be a better goal in retrospect, but at least we had a place to set out to reach when we started.
Writing good objectives is no different from writing anything else clearly. Starting with a list of interests, topics, or aspects of a subject to be included in the instruction, we can then determine what we plan to learn about these topics and put our aspirations in simple, straightforward language. Since, as instructors, we are subject area specialists or experts, we may tend not to notice the terminology or jargon that is so familiar to us. Having others review and comment on our objectives helps avoid this pitfall. Student involvement in reviewing and, ideally, preparing objectives adds to their value.
Although there are different ways to classify types of learning, I use the classic distinction between cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning as a basis for objective writing. Within each of these domains are levels of learning, ranging from simple to complex. The use of a hierarchical taxonomy is especially helpful in sequencing instruction and evaluating learning.
There are several strategies for making objectives more meaningful to adult learners. Obtaining information about students backgrounds, needs, and interests and incorporating this into the objectives will increase comfort and interest. To varying degrees, learners can participate in the review, discussion, and preparation of objectives. The more people know about the subject and the more experience they have in working with the concepts involved, the greater can be their involvement in planning the learning experience.