In this episode, Rob and Jared discuss objectives with Dr. Haisong Ye who has a PhD from Indiana State University and is an instructional designer in the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University. They engage in a thought experiment to create objectives for a course on how to make a good cup of coffee. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources. We would love to get your feedback! Please fill out our survey to help improve our podcast and serve you better.

Dr. Haisong Ye advocates for working through creating course objectives by starting with a simple question: what do you want students to be able to do by the end of this course? This strategy helps instructors begin by defining their end goals. To provide a specific example, Dr. Ye, Jared Pyles, and Rob McDole think about how they would design a course about making a good cup of coffee. The end goal of this type of course is that students would be able to brew a properly extracted cup of coffee. They brainstorm lower-level objectives, such as teaching students how to grind coffee, choose the right coffee beans, and set the proper water temperature. All of these coffee brewing variables build towards the end goal of the course. This thought experiment underscores the benefit of working through objectives for a course.