Key Principles of Educational Design: Objectives, Content, Evaluation, and Time

Effective Educational Design: Objectives, Content, and Evaluation

Defining Learning Objectives

• Must express what students should learn by the end of the teaching unit or project.
• Must include teaching-learning content (concepts, procedures, and values).
• Must refer to basic skills and capabilities to be developed.
• Must guide the learning process and evaluation.
• Are statements that begin with an action verb (infinitive). The verbs used should be observable and evaluable.
• Formulated from the students' point of view, using phrases like: “By the end of the teaching unit, students should have learned...”

Understanding Educational Content

Educational content encompasses various forms of knowledge and skills essential for learning:

• Procedural Content: A set of actions or procedures. These can be abilities (basic capabilities), strategies (which help solve problems), or techniques (processes).
• Conceptual Content: A set of facts, concepts, conceptual systems, or symbols within an area of knowledge.
• Attitudinal Content: A set of attitudes, values, and rules that education should improve and promote. These should guide the functionality and usefulness of knowledge.

Content is often written in an integrated manner, combining these elements:

Procedure/Action + Concept/System + Values/Purposes

Crafting Effective Evaluation Criteria

• Must refer to what is essential for all students (or at least most) to learn.
• Must capture the most significant aspects of the teaching and learning process.
• It could be what we “collect” in our “notepad.”
• Are written like objectives (infinitive), and therefore should also be observable.
• It is necessary to share them with students: they must be public, explicit, and known.
• It is recommended to inform students about the “main/star activities” and, for adults, the grading criteria for those activities.

Understanding Time in Teaching and Learning

Objectives for Temporal Understanding

• Interpret different evolutionary rhythms of societies and culture.
• Understand the historical evolution of humanity not as linear progress, but with advances and setbacks.
• Understand the past to interpret our present and contribute to building the best possible futures.

Essential Qualities of Time

Irreversible:

Time cannot go backward. Once it has happened, it cannot be undone.

Inseparable from Space:

Everything happens in a particular time and space. They can never be separated.

Relative:

Depends on the observer or the circumstances (subjective).

Multiple:

Each discipline or science analyzes it from a different perspective.