5.1: Questions about goals and objectives

I’m writing this after I read the chapter, so it’s hard to answer. However, here are some of the questions I have had, and will need to reference the book during writing, to make sure I’m heading in the right direction:

• What is the difference between a goal and objective?
• How specific does a goal need to be, and how general an objective?
• How does one make one’s goals measurable, with defined outcomes, without getting too specific at this point?

Here are two that are still fuzzier:

• How does one narrow one’s focus on goals and objectives — knock the number from many to manageable — without also having a clearer sense of the content? In my case, working on a theme-based class, I imagine that the content I decide to focus on will shift my language goals… or maybe just my objectives?

• I know that when I shift one piece of any puzzle — e.g. move a sentence in a piece of writing — it has a ripple effect throughout the whole work. As one goals along through a course, modifying goals and objectives based on reality, how does one adapt the whole shebang? Do you do that as you go along? Or do you make notes and change everything at once at the end? And how do these domino changes play out in the classroom, when the revision of one objective reverberates beyond one single class across the whole curriculum.

5.2: Experience with formulating goals and objectives

In a different context, when writing funding proposals for radio series and scope of work for Web sites, I’ve had to formulate goals and objectives, but in many cases they have been more implicit in the larger narrative. The objectives — the SWBAT equivalent — has involved factors like value to the audience, impact on the industry and economic self-sustainability after the funding period. I’ve had to address those specifically. But I think in general that goals have been embedded in the content description.

Maybe this is relevant here, since my project is content based: it’s hard to separate my goals from my content. I identify more with Denise Lawson’s statement: “… Although the idea of determining goals and objectives as a starting point made sense, I was reluctant to put mine on paper; it felt limiting…” And as mentioned, it seems like pulling a bone from a body: they are separable in theory — spine and flesh, goals and content — but doing so changes the integrity or stability of the whole. So I would feel more comfortable describing my goals directly in context — the arm, the bones and the relationship between — than dismantling them. However, I see the value in looking at them separately. Developing a curriculum is so complex that it’s essential to examine its parts as well as its whole.