Much of instructional and informational TV is poor because the producers had no clear purpose, or lost track of the purpose during the production process. Because we get little feedback from our audience it is even more important to have clearly defined goals and objectives in TV instruction than in classroom instruction.
Client-Centered Objectives. The best place to begin is to consider what the "powers that be" really want to accomplish. If you are producing programming for your own class, this should not be hard to determine, however idealistic goals from managers such as "enhance classroom teaching" may mask a hidden agenda such as giving the school system a "technologically sophisticated" image.
A neophyte producer with equipment typically available in a school media center will be asking for trouble if he/she tries to meet this unstated goal. Many people in all walks of life believe that anyone with a camcorder should be able to produce network quality programming, but this is simply not realistic.
Viewer-Centered Objectives. Once client-centered objectives are determined you should proceed to develop viewer-centered objectives.
For the purposes of this course we are going to pretend to be pure behaviorists and we will use behavioral objectives as a basis for our productions. In behavioral terms what we seek is to make an observable change in our viewers' behavior as a result of watching our program.
The first step in organizing a program around behavioral objectives is to define a general goal. This should be stated in one sentence if possible.
Next we need to describe the target audience for the program and specify the entry level. This is a listing of what we expect the viewer to know already before seeing our tape.
From this information, we determine the specific steps the viewer will need to go through to meet the goal. These become the objectives.
To state these in true behavioral terms each objective must have three components:
For example: Given a calculator and a series of random integers, the viewer will be able to compute the square roots of the integers correctly 95% of the time.
The major thing to keep in mind is not to confuse objectives with content. If we start writing a script before clearly defining the objectives, we tend to get wrapped up in the process and trendy effects and may lose sight of the goal. Clearly defined objectives help all the specialists who may work on the production to understand where it is going and to work toward effectively meeting the goal.
Bloom's Taxonomy is a system of ordering objectives based upon the complexity of behavior they seek to develop. It may be useful for the beginning producer to map out the steps of the taxonomy which apply to a particular goal before writing objectives. Keep in mind that not all goals require all steps. A lot will depend on the entry level. A beginning entry level will require more objectives at the lower end of the taxonomy, while a program aimed at people who already have advanced skills will probably concentrate on the upper levels.
The steps are on a continuum, and there is no hard and fast line between them. The six steps in the Cognitive Domain (dealing with thought) are presented below with some verbs which might be used in objectives for each step:
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