Assessing Student Learning
Assessing Student Learning Instructional Objectives Instructional objectives are clear statements or concepts that outline what students should know or be able to do after a specific period of instruction. These are sometimes referred to as behavioral objectives. It is highly beneficial to share these objectives with students at the beginning of a lesson or unit, so they know exactly what they are expected to learn. As the text explains, “Setting out objectives at the beginning of a course is an essential step in providing a framework into which individual lessons will fit” (Moss, Brookhart, & Long, 2011; Reeves, 2011). Without such a framework, instruction can easily drift off track, spending too much time on topics that are not central to the course (Slavin, p. 350). There are three key components of a well-written behavioral objective. First, it should specify how the learning will be assessed. Second, it must include an a...