Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

 The Cognitive Domain: concerned with the area of Subject matter knowledge and mental skills – the basic concern of educational and training programs.

The Affective Domain: deals with feelings, attitudes and values – the proper concern of education. Because these are internal behaviors, objectives have to be written in term of external indicator performances, which show the desired internal behavior has attained.

The Psychomotor Domain: concerned with the learning of physical skills, manipulative ability and neuromuscular co-ordination.

Cognitive Domain

KNOWLEDGE. The simplest cognitive behavior, involves the recall of information. Objectives concerned with terms and facts, knowledge of methods and criteria for handling terms and facts, and knowledge of the abstractions of a field are properly classified in this category.

COMPREHENSION. Objectives classified as "comprehension" require the ability to reorganize, restate, and interpret the facts, the methods and criteria for handling facts, and the generalizations and abstractions of a field.

APPLICATION. Utilization of knowledge in a new and different situation. Application covers things as rules, methods, concepts, principles, laws, and theories. Learning outcomes in this area requires a higher level of understanding than those under comprehension.

Analysis: Require the individual to determine the elements of some problem or theory under consideration, the relationship among the elements, and the relationship of the elements to the whole. This level can be characterized as taking the "whole" of a problem and breaking it down into its various parts to extract meaning from the situation.

Synthesis: Include behaviors like the development of a plan or a set of abstract relations. This level can be characterized as taking the various parts of a problem and putting them together to derive meaning from the situation.

Evaluation: Objectives requiring the evaluation or judging of theory or products according to internal evidence or external criteria are properly classified as evaluation objectives. Measurement at this level requires utilization of the lower level mental skills (knowledge, comprehension). The student is required to decide between right and wrong, good and bad, relevant and irrelevant. These decisions require knowledge and ability to analyze and synthesize data in the forming of sound, logical judgments. Items of this type are often quite difficult to construct because the necessity of being able to defend one alternative as a better response to an item than all other possible alternatives.

Components
of a Good Instructional Objective

Behavioral Term: an action verb that indicates what the student should be able to do.

Condition (s): an indication of the circumstances under which the action is to take place.

Standard (s): a description of the degree of skill to be reached in performing the action.    

Some Features of INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES  

• Concise: at the most, objectives should be one or two sentences in length.
• Singular: An objective should focus on one and only one aspect of behavior.
• Describe Expected behaviors: An objective should indicate the desired end product, not merely a direction of change or a teacher activity.
• Realistic: An objective should focus on observable behavior, not on teacher illusions or indefinable traits.
• Definite Terms (VERBS!!!): Terms such as "write, define, list and compare" have definite meanings, whereas terms such as "know, understand, and apply" have a multitude of meanings.

Example of a properly written IO

When given nine Styrofoam balls, each labeled to represent a planet, and a basketball on the table to represent the Sun (condition), the child (audience) will correctly place the Styrofoam balls in order as the planets are from the Sun (the measurable performance), with 80 percent accuracy (the criterion).

When given nine Styrofoam balls, each labeled to represent a planet, and a basketball on the table to represent the Sun (condition), the child (audience) will correctly place the Styrofoam balls in order as the planets are from the Sun (the measurable performance), with 80 percent accuracy (the criterion).

Mager-Type Objectives

1. Identify the terminal behavior by name; i.e. specify the type of behavior that provides acceptable evidence that the students has achieved the objectives.

2. Try to further define the desired behavior; i.e. identify and describe any important conditions under which the student is expected to perform.

3. Specify any acceptable performance criteria. I.e. identify and state the standards to which the student must perform to be acceptable. 

By the end of the lesson the students will be able to:

Translate the poem                                                     (Behavior)
using an English-Arabic dictionary                             (Condition)
with no more than three grammatical mistakes.           (Standard)