Duckworth on Education: Performance Objective Pitfalls

The best educators are good at creating and using performance objectives to help students achieve maximum real-world performance. Simply put, if you don’t have great objectives, you cannot have great performance. Or, even worse, with bad objectives students may do well, but the “education” you’re giving isn’t helping and may be hindering their performance.

A performance objective is simply the statement of what is supposed to be done; who is supposed to be doing it; where they’ll be doing it (not just a physical location but also the time and other conditions, e.g., in the back of an ambulance or at any time of day or night); and how well they’ll have to do it. These are often known as audience, behavior, condition, and degree, the classic ABCD objectives developed by education expert Robert Mager.¹ We’ve written about how to craft great performance objectives in mastery learning; in setting short, medium, and long-term objectives; and as answers you need to know. As important as it can be to be able to write great objectives, it could be just as important for educators to identify the kind of poorly written objectives that can torpedo your teaching.

Here are five of the most common performance objective pitfalls.

Overly broad objectives—These objectives sound good but are so broad as to give no indication of how exactly the students are supposed to demonstrate achievement. Effective performance objectives are written so that any student and any educator can read them and expect the exact same results. For example, Given an 18-inch board splint, gauze rolls, and tape, the EMT will fully assess and immobilize a simulated forearm fracture above and below the site of injury, as opposed to, The EMT will properly splint the patient. The second is so broad that different students could easily be on wildly different pages as to what “properly splinted” is, and different educators could be all over the place on how to teach and test it.

Other examples of bad objectives to watch out for include will fully understand, will be able to think critically, and will appreciate the patient’s feelings.

Bad “given” or “condition” statements—These are objectives that include information that may sound helpful but doesn’t actually clarify what the student is supposed to be doing. Examples include given instruction in cardiovascular emergencies and given adequate time to prepare. Samples of bad conditions may not specifically say The condition is. For example, conditions that help the student and educator understand what is supposed to be done include in a discussion group, with proper instruction, or under normal circumstances.

Objectives disconnected from real-world performance—It can be easy to confuse instructions for a particular exercise with actual education objectives. For example, Match the picture of the body organ with the name of the anatomical structure and Identify the long bones of the body may be instructions for great activities that eventually contribute to students achieving real-world performance objectives, but they are not performance objectives themselves. While an EMT should, of course, know the correct names for long bones in the body, it is unlikely they will have to suddenly list all of them as a way to contribute to an actual emergency call. If an educator wants the student to be able to identify long bones in order to give an effective handover report, this activity is fine, but the actual performance objective should be something like, Given a simulated patient, the paramedic must deliver a focused trauma handover including at least 12 of the 15 critical trauma criteria points.

Bad criteria—While our criteria might not always be as specific as we would like, we need to avoid criteria that are open to a wide variety of interpretations. Watch out for frustratingly vague phrases such as the paramedic will demonstrate an understanding or the EMT will learn about. Avoid phrases in your performance objectives such as student will correctly and instead specify what correctly means. Avoid to the satisfaction of the instructor. Instead specify what real-world performance will satisfy the criteria.

Reverse-engineered objectives—When revising performance objectives for an existing education program, it can be easy to fall into the trap of writing the objectives to match the lesson plan you’re already using. This is the reverse of how it needs to be done. How can you know what and how you’re going to teach and test until you’ve determined what the performance objectives are? That’s like deciding you’re going to draft your blueprints after you’ve built your house so it doesn’t slow things down. You likely won’t understand why your house doesn’t do what it is supposed to, and you’ll be frustrated by still having to write blueprints after the fact. As an educator you need to be thinking, What do we want the students to be able to do once the class is over? You do not want to think, How do I connect what I’m teaching to the test that I want to give?

The bottom line is that well-written performance objectives will clearly answer the students’ question, “What exactly am I supposed to do?” 

If you’re thinking Writing good objectives is difficult, or If I were to follow all of these recommendations, it would be a lot of work to rewrite these objectives, you are correct. Like virtually everything else worthwhile, good performance objectives are difficult to create but well worth the effort. They also get much easier with practice.

Whether you realize it or not, virtually every aspect of your class is tied to performance objectives—from designing the program to selecting the materials to testing the students to student satisfaction and, of course, the most important thing, which is the students’ ability to correctly perform the required skills. Now that you know what they look like, keep an eye out for the kind of performance objective pitfalls that can undermine your whole education program.

Reference

1. Mager RF. Preparing Instructional Objectives. Fearon Publishers, 1962.

Rommie L. Duckworth, LP, is a dedicated emergency responder and award-winning educator with more than 25 years working in career and volunteer fire departments, hospital healthcare systems, and public and private emergency medical services. He is currently a career fire captain and paramedic EMS coordinator. The founder and executive director of the New England Center for Rescue and Emergency Medicine, Rom is an emergency services advocate, author, and frequent speaker at conferences around the world. Contact him via RescueDigest.com.