adaptable structure is the S.M.A.R.T. framework for writing student-learning outcomes that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-sensitive (Doran, 1981). To the extent that these frameworks help, use them. However, we suggest that as you adapt and use these frameworks, you do so in ways consistent with your context.
A couple of examples might illustrate how objectives/goals and outcomes could work together in a course. First, in a mechanical engineering design course, instructional objectives and outcomes could be as follows:
“One objective of this course is to engage you in communication events that simulate professional contexts in the engineering design industry.”
For the same course, the learning outcome could be:
“By the end of this course, students will be able to translate technical material into understandable language for a lay audience during a design prototype presentation.”
In a composition course, you might have this instructional goal:
“This course will provide you with experience in expressing written ideas in an oral communication setting.”
A student learning outcome supporting this objective could be:
“By the end of this course, students will be able to translate written work into oral talking points for a public presentation.”
In a modern dance course, you might have the following as an instructional objective/goal:
“The goal for the course is to help students develop multimodal ways of thinking and talking about dance.”
The student learning outcomes for this course might be:
“By the end of this course, students will be able to articulate, in succinct performance review presentations, the rationale behind a series of movements within multiple eras of dance.”
You might notice that these objectives and outcomes blend communication and content in varied ways. Content-oriented goals/objectives are the meat of your course—and they essentially articulate what you want your students to learn in terms of course material. For some of you, there will be distinct content-oriented goals and communication-oriented goals. For others, your content and communication goals will blend. For example, in a software engineering course, the following outcome blends content and communication:
“By the end of this course, students will be able to accurately and succinctly diagnose unreported bugs in new software applications in impromptu managerial role plays.”
In an anatomy and physiology course, you might have separate content and communication outcomes:
“By the end of this course, students will be able to identify different parts of the skeletal, muscular, lymphatic, and respiratory systems” and
“By the end of this course, students will be able to accurately synthesize information about the human body when analyzing health and disease cases.”
How you articulate your content/communication outcomes is up to you. What is important is that you begin to articulate these objectives and outcomes so you can get a sense of how communication fits within the larger context of the course. Although we will spend additional time on teachable, measurable, and observable outcomes when we move to evaluation, it is critical that you begin writing those outcomes now, at the beginning of the process. They will stand as a map to help guide your decisions about assignment design and evaluation. Table 2.1 provides you with questions to help you think about the relevant objectives and outcomes for your course.
Table 2.1. Planning Questions: Relevant Objectives and Outcomes
| What are your key content-focused objectives and/or outcomes for the course? |
| What current assignments help you achieve your content-oriented objectives and/or outcomes for the course? |
| What are your key communication-focused objectives for the course? |
| What particular communication outcomes do you want your students to achieve by the end of this course? To what extent are they cognitive, affective, or behavioral? |
| What current assignments (if any) help you focus on your communication objectives and outcomes? |
Guiding Question: What assignment or activities can you design to achieve your oral communication goals and outcomes?
As you might have noticed, the process of identifying measurable student-learning outcomes leads you to consider the assignments within which those outcomes can be realized. The third decision point focuses on designing assignments and activities to achieve your objectives and outcomes. When thinking about the nature of the assignments, you will need to make decisions about the stakes, structure, and format of each assignment. Specifically, some of these assignments will be very formal, high-stakes events. Others might be very informal activities with little, if any, credit attached. You might structure some of these assignments as collaborative (e.g., team-based), or you might structure them in combination with other assignments (e.g., writing). Additionally, you will need to decide what type of oral communication activity you will have your students engage in during and outside of class. Some might look like traditional public presentations, and others might be more focused on teamwork or small-group communication competencies. The structure and nature of the communication assignment or activity should directly flow from your communication objectives and expected outcomes. If one of your objectives is to help students understand their readings more critically, then you can consider a wide variety of oral communication activities or assignments that could achieve that objective. Your decision, though, should be to go with whichever option is best aligned with the outcome you expect students to demonstrate. It might not make sense, for example, to have students give a formal thirty-minute presentation to achieve the objective of understanding readings more critically. A more aligned activity might be to have students rotate, with each student providing a two-minute critical review presentation in which they articulate the argument of the reading and one criticism of it to start the day’s discussion. An alternative might be for each student to pose two questions for clarification and one or two questions for evaluation in a two-minute informal presentation to the class. The point is, you get to decide how to construct oral communication activities and assignments, but those decisions should align with your goals.
Some of the questions you will need to consider in this decision point include
•What type of communication assignments or activities will best meet your objectives? (e.g., presentation, small group or team-based, one-on-one, etc.)?
•Where on the spectrum between formal (high stakes) and informal (low stakes) will the assignments or activities fall?
•What particular constraints do you want to place on the assignment or activity in order to focus students on your communication goals?
•What guidelines do you want to give students about the assignment or activity in order to focus them on your communication objectives?
•Are there ways to scaffold assignments and activities so that they work together to meet overall course goals (see Chapter 5 for a discussion on scaffolding)?
These questions will get you started. Chapters 4 and 5 of this book provide information on designing both formal communication assignments (often used to foster professional communication competencies) as well as informal communication activities. These chapters also provide information about how to scaffold these activities and assignment to best meet your desired goals.
Decision Point IV: Supporting Student Learning
Guiding Question: How can you support the distinct oral communication
