- You will specify terminal learning objectives
that are insufficient to guide competency-based development that
will support performance on the job.
Competency based development requires that objectives state
the target "competency" so that it can be measured.
A competency consists of an action and an outcome.
Your terminal learning objective must not state that the learner
must "understand" or "know" something. It
must contain an action verb.
This should not be a problem if you are basing the objective
on job tasks (as IPISD methodology requires), the action verbs
of your objectives come straight from the task statement.
However if you have not done a job task analysis, then you
must either go back and identify job behaviors that will be
the target of your instruction, or admit that your instruction
may not actually contribute to job performance.
- Your objectives will not accurately reflect
job competencies.
You must faithfully carry forward the job task descriptions
into the objectives. To do this you must be rigorous in matching
the task statements chosen for inclusion in the training learning
objectives.
- Your test items will not measure the actual
job competencies.
You must match the test items with the job performance measures
identified in the analysis phase. If you did not do rigorous
analysis, then you may be teaching and measuring outcomes that
have no impact on actual job performance.
- Your course will contain information that
is already known by most of your participants or may not contain
sufficient "foundation" skills for the learner to reach
the terminal learning competency.
You must match your instruction to the audience, so that they
are not bored or left behind. This can only be done by an analysis
of the target audience, and their current skills levels.
You will have developed learning hierarchies that lead up to
your terminal learning objectives. You can "test"
representative groups and see what objectives in the learning
hierarchies they mostly already know.
If you don't do this you will waste student and development
time by designing instructions for things they already mostly
know, or by presenting them with instruction that is set at
too high a level of required prerequisite knowledge.
If the level is set too high you will find that the students
will mostly be unable to achieve the terminal learning objective,
and will have thus wasted their time in the classroom.
- You will present the instruction in a
sequence that is not optimum to efficient learning.
Hierarchies of learning objectives set the sequence in which
skills and facts are most easily learned. That is their function.
If you violate the optimum learning sequence as prescribed
by learning theory, you will get a less efficient process in
the classroom.
If you violate the sequence severely, most students won't
learn at all, but if you merely deviate slightly, you will find
that some students won't "get it". They will not make
the leaps over the gaps in your sequence.
