Week 2 : My Journey With ABCD Method for Writing Behavioral Objectives

'Aims', 'goals' and 'objectives' are very common terms used in instructional planning. They all are related to the expected outcomes of the instruction. Aims and goals are very general and non-specific and are appropriate for an entire course or syllabus. However, objectives are very specific and apt for the individual lesson of the course.
Objectives are the intended learning outcomes that the instructor intends to be achieved after the instruction. In other words, they are the statements of expected behavior that the students will exhibit in their performance after the instruction. They help the instructor to select content, develop activities, select the method and techniques to be used in the class and develop materials. Regarding the role of objectives, Jones (1997) writes, “Clear objectives can help the instructor design lessons that will be easier for the student to comprehend and the teacher to evaluate.”
While writing or determining objectives, teachers should be very careful. They should know that the objectives they write should be specific, measurable, attainable, reliable and time bounded (SMART). Any sort of ambiguity and vagueness should be avoided to make the statements clear and strong enough for defining and describing the performance behavior of the learners that they show after the lesson. The crucial factor that helps to write such statements is the selection of the verbs that are used to prepare the statements. Non-action verbs like comprehend, learn, understand know, memorize etc. should not be used in writing objectives. Especially action verbs like say, write, read, compare, sing, locate etc. are very much useful because they demand particular behavior from the side of the learners. This can be illustrated with the following sets of objectives:
Set A:
• Given the learners chance to listen to the rhyme “Ding Dong Bell”, they will be able to know the rhyming worlds with 60% accuracy.
• Given the opportunity to read the story “The Kind Ghost”, the learners will understand how the Kind Ghost saved the life of the common people from other cruel ghosts.
Set B
• Given the learners chance to listen to the rhyme “Ding Dong Bell”, they will be able to say at least two pairs of rhyming words.
• Given the opportunity to read the story “The Kind Ghost”, the learners will be able to describe how the Kind Ghost saved the life of the common people from other ghosts in ten sentences.

In these two sets of objectives, Set A does not contain action verbs. So these objectives are vague and it is very difficult to measure the learners’ performance using them. However, the verbs that Set B contains are action verbs and they demand the concrete behavior from the side of the learners.
While writing objectives, the domains and various hierarchies of learning that Bloom and others have developed should be kept in mind. Our objectives should demand any of the learning domains viz cognitive, affective or psychomotor. In other words, our objectives should be capable of addressing either mental and intellectual skills that come under cognitive domain or emotional and attitudinal skills that come under the affective domain or manual or physical skills that come under the psychomotor domain. We should select the appropriate verbs for writing clear objectives from the reference of such domains.
ABCD Method for writing Objectives
ABCD method is a very useful and easier approach for writing objectives. Here, “A” stands for “Audience.” It refers to who the objectives are written to. In our case, audience refers to the learners whom we teach. “B” stands for “Behavior”. It refers to the particular behavior or action or task that the learner is expected to do after the completion of the lesson. In other words, it is what we expect our learners be able to do after we teach a particular concept. “C” stands for “Condition”. It refers to the circumstances or contexts under which learners are expected to perform something. It is the sum of circumstances that enhance the learners to accomplish a given task. The last letter of the acronym ABCD, “D” stands for “Degree”. It refers to the degree or level of mastery that the learners show while doing a particular task. In other words, it says how well the learners do a given tasks. Degree of degree of accuracy can be related to the time limit (5 minutes or 10 minutes) or number of the correct answers or a range of accuracy (60%) or some other qualitative means. One example is given below:

• Given some model blogs and proper instructions and guidelines, the participants will be able to create their own blog within one hour.

Here,
• A = participants
• B = creating their own blog
• C = given some model blogs and proper instruction and guidelines
• D = within one hour

References:
• www.nlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
• http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingoblectives/
• http://www.slideshare.net/ashleytan/writing-specific-instructionallearning-objectives-presentation
• http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/classifications.html
• http://www.ehow.com/info_7946641_format-objectives-classroom-activities.html