Task 0: Preparation
Reviewing Your Work

Deliverable 1: Identifying Learning Objectives

1. A learning objective should state what the student will be able to do, not what the student will know. If you find yourself using words like “know” or “understand,” ask yourself “why?,” i.e., “what should the student be able to accomplish as a result of knowing or understanding X?”
2. Avoid making your objective too wordy, too vague or overly specific.
• For example
  • “Use the advanced features of PL/SQL” is too vague
  • “Rudiments of data base design, implementation and use. Basic understanding of various data modeling techniques. Overview and comparison of data base management systems. “ is too wordy
3. Avoid writing objectives without
• Performance measures to assess if the objective is being met or not
• A clearly associated learning context.

Deliverable 2: Formulating a scenario

1. If you used job postings and interviews with professionals to enumerate the required skills then note that these tools help to identify key tasks which must be then woven into a scenario. Often professionals can tell you stories of their professional practice in which they have had to employ the identified skills. A set of such episodes can generally be woven into a continuous narrative without difficulty.
2. A scenario exists to frame learning activities and to demonstrate the real-world applicability of knowledge and skills. Avoid details that don’t directly add pedagogical value to the scenario.
3. Don’t fall into the trap of conceiving of a scenario as a linked sequence of traditional homework problems.
4. Add some details that make your scenario more intriguing. Attach such material to the actors in your scenario, but be aware that your scenario must have a consistent internal logic. Keep in mind that things may be interesting to a novice which are not as interesting to you as an expert.
5. Coherence is crucial. The scenario must tell a story that has real-world plausibility.
6. Don’t shy away from writing a scenario that is deliberately flawed to help achieve a specific learning outcome. For example, your scenario might omit key steps for managing a project, which students must recognize and correct as they learn about managing projects.
7. Use simple setting for writing your scenarios with enough detail to engage the students and to situate their activities realistically but without spurious detail for its own sake.
8. Build an early foundation (say in first paragraph) with details including who, what, when, where.
9. Your ideas will change as you start writing your scenario. Plan on producing multiple drafts.
10. It helps to close your eyes and imagine your scenario as part of a movie; this may help you in making others to suspend their disbelief and envision the scenario as real. Note however that absolute veridicality is not required to create a successful scenario. (For example, for an art history course, we once created a scenario in which students played the role of art detectives assessing the authenticity of paintings from their style and provenance.)
11. In many cases things you do in your own professional life are reasonable to include the scenario.
12. If you’re stuck, avoid spending hours obsessing about the scenario. The best scenarios often appear out of the back of your mind when you’re engaged in other activities. Work on something else for a while and see what happens.
13. You may need to bounce back and forth between the scenario and learning objectives, refining the learning objectives as necessary.

Deliverable 3: Identifying prerequisite student skills

1. Prerequisites should allow a student to understand in depth the knowledge and skill requirements for the course. This may include technical skills, writing skills, computer skills et cetera.
2. Prerequisites should help instructors to determine which students are likely to succeed in the course and which need additional preparatory work.
3. Formulating prerequisite skills should help sharpen your scenario by defining its limits, i.e., what it teaches and what it does not. This exercise may cause you to revise your scenario.

Updated: June 6, 2005