A--Audience
Who is the audience for your educational activity? While it may appear the audience is obvious for most instructional activities, a common error may distort or prevent the evaluation of your program. First, one must consider the difference between the target and accessible population/audience. Your target may be all youth between 14 and 16 years of age in Typical County; however, your accessible population may be all 14-16 year old 4-H members who attended the County 4-H Camp. If you write your objective in broad terms and follow proper evaluation procedures, you will be held accountable for the behaviors of youth you never served. Your behavioral objective should identify the specific audience you plan to target.
A second mistake made by many inexperienced educators is to include teacher/trainer activities as a part of the behavioral objective. Consider the following example: "The trainer will demonstrate the proper steps of delivering a prepared speech." In this example, the activities are focused on what the trainer plans to do and not what the target audience will be able to master. Although it has the appearance of being one, the statement is not a behavioral objective because the audience and its performance are not identified. This statement could be made into a behavioral objective by rewording the statement to the following: "Upon completion of the lesson, 100% of the participants will be able to list the steps in delivering a prepared speech." The audience is the workshop participants.