What an awesome experience?

Third week became really delicious to me. I could create my own bookmarking site where I could list different websites with specific tags on www.delicious.com.
At first, I found quite difficult to add the links and tag them but once I succeeded to do it, I felt like now my websites, i.e., the websites of my interest won't be lost as I would be getting them from any computers that I will be using. I have added nearly 15 links in two different category viz. private and public. My URL is www. delicious.com/sagun_shres.
The most interesting thing that I could do this week is the successful presentation on 'A Small Sharing With Gems Faculty'. I requested the supervisor of my school to arrange 90 minutes for me i.e., the last two periods of my school to share what I have learned in webskills programs with English Faculty I shared the following things:
1. How to formulate objectives using ABCD model?
2. How to use delicious DOT com , a social bookmarking site?
3. Howto use search engines like twurdy and hakia which are academic searches?
4. What are the creative writing strategies?
 The final one is I learnt from the workshop conducted by Oddile Rimbert , Lecturer of Kings College, London some days back.
It was unfortunate to see the same day our AV room projector went dead yet I could manage using alternative means.  you can view a pictue where my colleagues are seen as keenly interested to know some web resources.

After I shared with them, the response was really inspiring. They all liked delicious and search engines like Twurdy and Hakia. ABCD model in formulating objectives was indeed their quest from long back  since we have to fill our plan book each day in school.

ABCD Model : The Perfect Guideline in Formulating Objectives

I had learnt Bloom's taxonomy and also learnt the skills of formulating objectives in my academic course but there was no talk of ABCD approach in formulating objective which  I could learn in webskills course. All of us know that objective is the core part of any lesson plan that needs to be clear to guide the learners and to be guided oneself. Unless we set objectives, we don't know where, how, when we are approaching. But just merely to solve this problem, simply formulating objective without taking heed of the aspects that are needed to be incorporated just misguides us. The good objective guides to the right direction and to the same extent the spoiled objective guides us to the wrong direction.

What is ABCD approach then?
A - Audience
B - Behaviour
C - Condition
D - Degree of Mastery Needed
The ABCD method of writing objectives is an excellent starting point for writing objectives (Heinich, et al., 1996)


While formulating objectives, we need to take care of these points:

1. Audience – Who? Who are your learners?
2. Behavior – What? What do you expect them to be able to do? This should be an overt, observable behavior, even if the actual behavior is covert or mental in nature. If you can't see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, you can't be sure your audience really learned it.
3. Condition – How? Under what circumstances or context will the learning occur? What will the student be given or already be expected to know to accomplish the learning?
4. Degree – How much? How much will be accomplished, how well will the behavior need to be performed, and to what level? Do you want total mastery (100%), do you want them to respond correctly 80% of the time, etc. A common (and totally non-scientific) setting is 80% of the time. (source : http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/ )

Following these hints, we can formulate objectives of all three domains viz. psychomotor, cognitive and affective domain.

1. Psychomotor :Given dribbling skills in football game, the trainees of football will dribble at least for 50 seconds in the game they play with opponent teams.

2. Cognitive: Given a general background about the author, W. H. Auden and his poem, Night Mail, the students will be able to paraphrase four stanzas of the poem. 

3. Affective:"Given the opportunity to work in a team with several people of different races, the student will demonstrate an positive increase in attitude towards non-discrimination of race, as measured by a checklist utilized/completed by non-team members."

Any objective follow the principle of SMART. IT is an acronym for the characteristics of an objective.

SMART Model

•Specific

•Measurable 

•Attainable 

•Relevant

•Time - Limited

I hope this detail can to some extent help you to formulate objectives.

References:

http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/

http://www.virginiaassessment.org/documents/2005%20Workshop%20Presentations/Writing%20Measurable%20Objectives.pdf

http://www.slideshare.net/ashleytan/writing-specific-instructionallearning-objectives-presentation

Hello

Since I have found the friends from different parts of the world, I found myself keenly interested to make a good ELT community with this webskills program. It has really enthralled me to log on my email account and nicenet normally thrice a day to check out some noble messages and postings. Thanks to Oregon webskills team.

The postings from my online friends seem to be so brilliant and perfect. At times, I feel I can never post like the ones they are doing. It's so succinct. Nevertheless, I will always make an effort to reach there. It's just the first week and of course, we have numerous expectations. Some of us must have been baffled as well regarding what we may do but in the mean time we have plethora of instructions too which lucidly guides us and our one of the instructors Robert's readiness for any sort of help paves further way to go ahead. Thanks