Not your mama's lesson objectives!

Get a piece of paper and a pen. No really, do it. Now write down everything you know about writing good lesson objectives. Write down a quick example of a lesson objective you have seen before. Your paper probably looks something like this:

Now I want you to take that piece of paper and fold it in half. Now fold it in half again. Now crumple it up into a little ball. Your paper should look something like this:

Now throw it away.

Unlearn Your Old Ways

The biggest barrier to new designers understanding and correctly using Backward Design is that they hold onto their previous methods. In the wisdom of the Disney movie Frozen... Let it Go!

Embrace a beginners blank mind. Assume things will be done differently. Give it a try in this Educate! way, master it, and then if you are still not convinced, you can argue your case to go back to your old way.

Rule #1:

You are the designer; you make the objective.

There is no space for the common practice of delegating the actual design decisions & design work to the participants (especially when you cannot think of anything). For example, there should never be an objective like this one:

Participants will be able to identify their own problems, come up with their own solutions to those problems, and then solve those problems.

If they could solve it themselves, why are you having this training? What value are you adding? I can tell you: very little. Of course, you want to empower the participants. You want the participants to gain skills. You want them to think. You want to challenge them. But give them the challenge of gaining the skills to implement the solution, not to design the solution itself. Look at the bad objective above. That last part "and then solve those problems" is your sweet spot for empowerment. That's the action-oriented, high-impact, skill-building part.

And, why waste everyone's time just trying to agree on which problem to solve? This is different from investing time in deep diving on one problem to understand it better. Why waste time restating the solutions everyone already knows? This is different from investing time in sharing lessons learned from trying out different solutions. What skills do they gain from only reflecting on what has gone right and wrong? No new skills.

You are the designer. Embrace it. Make a clear and specific vision to solve clear and specific problems. Create solutions. Add value. Help the participants take new actions.

5 Examples of Bad Objectives:

• Teachers would be able to identify the causes of absenteeism in the mathematics class.

So the teachers find the causes, so what? Where's the impact?

• The program officers will be able to get to understand the small business started by the fellows.

And then what happens with this new understanding? I don't know...

• Youth leaders will be able to create an action plan for how to support club and personal projects.

Were they unable to make an action plan before? What should be in this action plan? How do you know they have the skills to take the actions in the plans they will make?

• Government Officials will be able to discuss possible ways supporting mentors.

My eyes hurt even reading this objective as it is painfully unfinished...what if the officials write totally unrealistic ways of supporting mentors? What if they write vague ways of support like "creating a conducive environment"? How will you assess if your training made any impact if the only objective is to come up with possibilities?

• Head teachers will be able to demonstrate their willingness to support the program.

By doing what? Be specific!

Rule #2:

The objective describes ACTIONS the participants take to solve real problems.

Most people are okay with the first part of this rule: You want objectives about application that go beyond merely understanding. Actions are easy. The hard part is ensuring that those actions solve real problems.

Why is this different?

Because most objectives solve imaginary problems or, even worse, do not solve any problems at all. The first step is being clear on which problem you are trying to solve. Are you trying to solve the problem of "poor time management" or "lack of business ideas" or "low leadership skills" or "low teacher motivation to assess learners". Name the problem. Step 2 is make sure that problem really exists. Why do you think teachers "lack motivation" to assess learners? Could it be some other reason? Is it a practical problem of there being too many learners to assess? Are you sure learners lack business ideas? Or is it a problem of the quality of their ideas? Etc. Step 3 is make a solution to that problem (not to another problem) to that problem. A solution not an activity. Examples: How exactly should you schedule the activities to solve "poor time management"? How can you make an assessment procedure that can work with 100 students in a class? What makes a quality business idea and how do you make a standard process for coming up with them?

I will give you a hint: if you suggest doing a "time management training" or "planning their time" as the solution for "poor time management", you haven't presented a solution. What is the specific action the learners will take after the training to manage their time better?

Rule #3:

The objective describes actions participants take AFTER the training (aka on their own).

This is the part designers struggle with the most. It requires the most unlearning. Unfortunately, lesson objectives are often taught as and written as descriptions of what happens during the lesson. They are restatements of the activities to be done. For example, you want to do an activity where students write the advantages and disadvantages of saving so the lesson objective you write is: "Learners will be able to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of saving". It is all very neat and tidy when objectives are written this way because they tell you exactly what happens during the lesson "Activity #1: Students discuss the advantages and disadvantages of saving". It is so sweet and tempting!! So easy! So direct!

But unfortunately, it is so wrong.

Why?

Here are three good reasons why you should make the (admittedly hard) switch to writing lesson objectives about the actions after the lesson instead of during the lesson:

1. Naming the "end in mind". E! emphasizes so much on Objectives focusing on "SWBAT After the lesson" because the biggest problem is beginning with that end in mind. It is focusing on achieving the end result and not jumping to the "what happens during training". The objective communicates WHY you should do whatever you want to do during the training--the end result. If your objective doesn't state the end result, then the activities during the training may not reach the end result.

Take for example teaching "biz planning". Why are you teaching this? The obvious answer is that you are teaching it so that learners plan their businesses. But why do you want learners to plan their businesses? Is it because you have seen learners businesses fail due to lack of planning? Is it because the biz plan can be submitted for funding opportunities? Those are two very different end goal results that would affect how you teach business planning. If it is for the purpose of avoiding biz failure, then you would teach whichever aspects most entrepreneurs fail to plan well (such as cash flow) but if it is for the purpose of funding applications, then you would teach much more about the words and structure of the plan to ensure it is attractive to readers. Same activity, very different end goal!

2. Direct connection to impact. Sometimes we imagine a connection to impact that is not actually catered for in our lesson. For example, let us take the case of a program which has the impact goal of "teachers adopt skills lab". Then you see the lesson objective of the first teacher training is "teachers apply problem framing". What is the connection? How does applying problem framing lead to skills lab adoption? I am sure you (or the designer) can think of some way to connect them; but, the issue is, it is not the same focus, not directly. You are very far from talking about skills lab. So, how likely is it that this lesson will have a big impact on that goal: unlikely. The weaker the connection, the weaker the impact.

3. Easy assessment. If the objective states a goal for after the training, then the assessment of whether the training worked is also based on what happens after the training. 100% aligned to impact! The alternative is an assessment that is of the training itself and you have no idea if the achievement of that makes in difference in the real world. Take for example, a beginning designers favorite objective: "SWBAT create an action plan". With this objective, you could make an assessment of that action plan--such as, is the action plan complete? does it have clear goals? does the plan include resources? etc etc All on the quality of the action plan. Beautiful, right? Wrong. Because nothing about a beautiful plan means that the plan will be put into action. In fact, there is an inverse relationship between the size and complexity of a plan, and the amount of actions taken (Source: Michael Fullan)

Examples of Good Objectives:

(These are a revision of the 5 bad objectives above)

• Teachers will be able to include inspiring case studies of female mathematicians in their lessons to decrease absenteeism.
• The program officers will be able to train fellows on how to assess the profitability of their businesses.
• Youth leaders will be able to facilitate scholars in the process of applying their business club experience to starting their own personal back home projects.
• Government Officials will be able to support mentors by mobilizing business club competition prizes.
• Head teachers will be able to provide teachers with resources & materials for making skills lab learning aids.