Download Gaining the Competitive Advantage: Using

GAINING THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE:
USING PARTICIPANT-ORIENTED BEHAVIORAL
LEARNING OBJECTIVES IN INSTRUCTIONAL
DESIGN AND DELIVERY
A Presentation for the
IASIA Annual Conference
GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS AND
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:
IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION AND
TRAINING
SPONSORED BY
THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTES OF
ADMINISTRATION
ABU DHABI
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
9-14 JULY 2007
WORKING GROUP I.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAMME
SUBMITTED BY
Blue Wooldridge, BA, MGA, MPA, DPA
Fellow, National Academy of Public Administration
And
Professor
The L. Douglas Wilder
School of Government and Public Affairs
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
Richmond, VA 23284-2028
[email protected]
Website: www.people.vcu.edu/~bwooldri
ABSTRACT
“Competing in the global economy requires educating, training and
developing workers to meet new challenges” (Sims & Sims 2006, p.
vii). However, just as global competiveness presents opportunities
to Schools and Institutes of Administration (SIA), such
competiveness also present challenges. The mobility of managerial
staff to take courses in other countries or institutions, and the ability
of other institutes to offer instruction through distance education
modes, requires each SIA to take every advantage of ways to
improve and to highlight the quality of their courses.
This presentation will provide evidence supporting the
importance of “participant-oriented behavioral learning
objectives” (POBLOs). in the improvement of instructional
design and delivery. This concept will be defined, and
placed in its sequence in the “Strategic-Contingency
Approach to Instruction Design” (Wooldridge, 2004). The
purpose that POBLOs can serve will be delineated, and key
words useful in writing learning objectives will be presented.
At the end of this presentation members of the audience
should be able to write POBLOs for a specific instructional
task.
In my article in the International Review of Administrative
Sciences
(Wooldridge, 2004). I describe the steps to
Strategic-Contingency Approach to instructional design.
These steps include:
 identifying the strategic mission of the organization of
the students
 identifying specific job performances necessary to meet
the organization’s strategic mission;
 determine the “performance gap” caused by a lack of
competencies;
 for those employees identified in the previous step,
identify learner’s instructional needs;
 transform these needs into Participant/student oriented
Behavior-SMART Learning-Objectives;
 sequence Learning Objectives;
 select Appropriate learning strategies based on level and
types of objectives;
 identify relevant learning styles;
 modify learning strategies to respond to learning styles
or
 take corrective action to lessen deficiencies in strategies;
 implement learning strategies in the most effective
manner; and
 evaluate results.
In this short piece, I jump into the middle of the instructional
design approach by suggesting, and providing some
evidence, that writing (and including in the course syllabus)
Participant Oriented-Behavioral Learning Objectives
(POBLOs) can improve the improve the effectiveness of
Public Administration instruction. Each of this complicated
term has significance. “Participant-oriented emphasizes that
the learning objectives should be viewed from the
perspective of what the participant/student will know,
comprehend/be able to apply at the end of our course (this
concept is closely related to the “participant-focus”
instruction advocated by Wessels, 1999, and others).
“Behavioral” refers to the fact that we ought to be able to
observe by their actions, whether our “participants” have
conquered the course objectives.
Definition and justification of participant oriented
behavioral learning goals and objectives
A goal is a general statement of what the teacher hopes
to accomplish during a course (Hannah & Michaelis,
1977). ). These terms are normally considered to be
broad or general statements of educational intent. They
usually describe the overall purpose of a course. Some
goals I have developed for my core MPA course in
Public Policy Analysis and Implementation are:
Attempts will be made to successfully achieve several
goals during this segment. These include having the class
participant develop the competencies to:
l. describe and explain the relationships and purpose s of
the basic characteristics of the rational decision-making
process, and its potential use and abuse in public policy
formulation; and,
2. describe, explain the use of, and be able to apply
appropriately specific techniques used in rational
decision-making that assist in dealing with the
identification of costs and benefits as well as the setting
of objectives and the selection of alternatives.
After the training goals have been specified, participant-oriented
behavioral learning objectives (POBLOs) can be developed
(Wooldridge, 1987a). Mager (1962) describes an objective as "an
intent communicated by a statement describing a proposed
change in a learner--a statement of what the learner is to be like
when he has successfully completed a learning experience" (p. 3).
Others has defined training objectives as, a description of a
performance you want learners to be able to exhibit before you
consider them competent, or what the trainee should be able to
accomplish after successfully completing the training program,
(Goldstein, 1974). ). “Educational objectives are collections of
…precise, …detailed statements relating to different aspects of the
fulfillment of specific aims.
In the generally-accepted usage of the work, objectives have
taken on the status of definitive descriptions of desirable
educational outcomes, often expressed in terms of what
students should be able to do at the end of their course,
(Ellington, p. 2).
My own concept of participant orientated behavior learning
objectives (POBLOs), emphasizes two very important
issues. One is that the learning objective must be stated
in terms of what the trainee can know, feel or apply at the
end of the training module (analogize to the “outcomes”
focus of Wessels, 1999), and secondly, such new
competencies must be observable through the behavior of
the trainee.
Around the time I did my analysis of PHRM syllabi,
Training Magazine reported that only 60% of the Human
Resource Development professionals who responded, wrote
learning objectives in behavioral terms (as reported in Rossett,
1986). Yet research in both organizational behavior and pedagogy
clearly screams for such clear articulation of what the learner is to
master.
For example, let us examine the Goal Setting cognitive Theory of
motivation as suggested by Locke (1968); Locke & Latham, (1984);
Latham & Locke (1991); and Tubbs (1986) . “Goal setting theory is
based on the simplest of introspective observations, namely, that
conscious human behavior is purposeful,” (Latham & Locke, 1991,
p. 212).
The existence of a goal (objective) creates a tension that
motivates individuals to achieve that goal. It is
possible to identify six relatively distinct task-goal
attributes that facilitate task performance in a goalsetting environment:
1). goal specificity; 2). goal difficulty; 3). participation
in goal-setting; 4). feedback on goal effort; 5). peer
competition for goal attainment; and 6) goal
acceptance. (Steers, 1981, p. 171). Another major, and
related, attribute of task-goals is goal commitment. As
of 1991, approximately 400 studies have examined the
relationship of goal attributes to performance (Latham
& Locke, 1991).
In examining the benefits of a systematic approach to
instructional design, Serafin (1990) found that, “More
explicit course syllabus in terms of number of objectives,
content, instructional resources and grading components
represent greater information and instruction that are
better captured and processed in the learning situation
experienced by the students.” (p. 11).
Ellington (no date) suggests benefits for participant
oriented behavioral learning objectives. In describing the
advantages of POBLOs he writes:
Detailed, well-written objectives allow both teaching staff
and students to have a clear picture of the behavior that is
expected of the latter at the end of a course. This can help
Another advantage is that clear behavioral
objectives can provide is in adjusting teaching
methods to facilitate the achievement of the
stated objectives.
A further benefit which can arise from a clear
statement of objectives is that a teacher who is
in possession of such objectives should be in a
much better position to decide how they may
be assessed, since he should know exactly
what behaviors he is supposed to be assessing.
Writing Participant-Oriented Behavioral Learning Objectives
Some management developers/trainers have suggest that learning
objectives should be SMART:
 SPECIFIC State exactly what the learner will be able to do or say
 MEASURABLE The instructor can observe learning progress
during the session
 ACTION VERB The verb should be action oriented (identify,
list, develop, explain, make, define, ask, provide, review, compare
contrast, demonstrate, apply).
 REALISTIC The objectives need to be doable by all participants
 TIME-BOUND The objective should be attainable by the end of
the session
According to Mager, an objective should be written in
clear, unambiguous terms that can be understood without
the need for explanation. The objective should always
contain the following three elements (Ellington):
 It should state what the student should be able to do at
the end of the learning experience (the terminal
behavior).
 It should state the conditions or constraints under
which this terminal behavior is to be exhibited
 It should give a clear indication of the minimum
standard of performance that is considered acceptable.
Since the major purpose of a POBLO is to describe the
expected terminal behavior, “a key part of each
objective is the verb, which should be chosen carefully
so as do describe as unequivocally as possible exactly
what the student should be able to do on completing
the particular learning activity,” (Ellington, p. 4)
Mager has two lists of verbs to contrast the types of
words that could be used to describe behaviors (as
cited in Hardt):
Verbs open to many
interpretations
Know
Understand
Appreciate
Grasp significance of
Enjoy
Believe
Have faith in
Verbs open to fewer
interpretations
Write
Recite
Differentiate
Solve
Construct
Compare
Contrast
List
After the goals and behavioral objectives for each
administrative course have been clearly spelled out,
the instructor should compare the knowledge, skills and
Attitudes to be gained from the course with those
identified, during the needs assessment stage.
In light of this insight I have had to revise my own course
syllabi to replace verbs such as “know” and “understand”
with more descriptive words as “list,” “compare,”
“contrast,” and “differentiate.”
Groups learning objectives into useful categorizes and
Sequence the learning objectives
The final step in my Strategic-Contingency Approach to
Management Training which I will discuss in this chapter is
how to group the participant-oriented behavior learning
objectives, developed in the previous section into meaningful
categorizes, and provide suggestions as how to sequence the
resultant groups.
Several authors have suggested different categorizes in which to group
learning objectives. . McCleary and McIntyre (1972) suggested groups
identified at specific levels of learning--familiarity, understanding or
application combined with the type of learning to take place (
technical, conceptual or human relational). Other authors have
suggested such categorizes as: Knowledge Acquisition, Knowledge
Retention, Acceptance, (Carroll, Payne and Ivancevich ,1972;.
Newstrom, 1980; and Shoenfelt, Eastman and Mendel ,1991). Using
common categorizes such as these are useful since these researchers
have attempted to relate the effectiveness of various instructional
strategies to each of these groups of learning objectives.
Paige and Martin (1983) have taken the sequencing of learning
objective one step further.
Many participant-oriented behavior learning objectives confront
the trainee with the possibility of revealing things about
themselves to others that they would prefer left unknown and
with the risk of failure. An issue facing the trainer is the degree to
which he/she can properly sequence such learning objectives into
the overall training experience. Paige and Martin presented in a
sequencing order according to the behavioral requirements of the
activity, the learning domain(s) of the activity and the degree of
personal risk (both self-disclosure and possibility of failure)
associated with the activity. They suggest that the early learning
objectives should require instructional strategies that minimize
trainee risk, and increase the risk level as the trainee begins to
become more comfortable.
Effective sequencing of learning objectives and
instructional strategies are also discussed in recent
articles by Aristiqueta (1997) and Denhardt, Lewis,
Raffel and Rich (1997). The insight provided by all
three of these discussions should be thoughtfully
reviewed by all public sector trainers.
References
are included
in the full paper.