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Instructional Design & Development
Step #1: Write Objectives
As a result of your performance consulting, you should know the performance requirements required to achieve business goals. We begin the design phase at this point and write objectives for our training; these objectives sounds suspiciously like performance requirements! Objectives are important for several reasons:
- Adults like to know what’s coming up so they can plan their learning.
- They help us design our training by focusing on what MUST be included in the training (scope) and how much we detail we need (depth).
- They help keep us as a class on track (sequence) and at the right level (scope or depth).
- They help us determine if we’ve done what we set out to do; they represent the end point that we want to achieve in our training.
There are three primary components to an objective:
- The behavior: This is what participants do. The behavior always includes a verb such as describe, apply, demonstrate, list, match, analyze, determine, etc.
- Conditions for performance: These are the givens — what participants are provided. (Examples: “Given a list of features, select the top three…” or “given a case study scenario, identify …”)
- The criteria: Criteria refers to how we expect to measure performance; we can typically look for accuracy, speed, or proficiency in meeting criteria. (Examples: “… within two tries.” or “… with 95% accuracy.”)
Examples of objectives include:
| Condition(What they’re given) |
Behavior (What they do) |
Criteria(How we measure) |
| Given a customer complaint |
respond to the complaint using your procedures |
meeting the skills criteria on the Skills Criteria Sheet. |
| Given typical claims |
classify the type of claim |
to 100% accuracy. |
| Given typical claims and the software application |
process the claim |
in under two minutes. |
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There are two basic levels of objectives:
Remember: These objectives require some type of recall whether it is to list, describe, explain, match, or define.
Apply: These objectives require that you DO something whether it is to respond, classify, process, or demonstrate.
Since most of us get paid to DO something as opposed to simply REMEMBER something, our training objectives should be written at the APPLY level. Here are Remember objectives from the chart above; compare the two:
| Condition(What they’re given) |
Behavior (What they do) |
Criteria(How we measure) |
| Given a customer complaint |
list the steps required to resolve the complaint. |
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Define the four different types of claims |
from memory. |
| Given typical claims and a list of steps |
order the claim processing steps |
to 100% accuracy. |
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It is clear that the Remember level objectives may be important in order to perform the Apply level objectives, but they are not the required performance on the job. Good training approximates as closely as possible the work environment and expectations.
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