Instructional objectives in agronomic education

ABSTRACT Student attitudes toward the use of instructional objectives were measured in courses in introductory soils, principles of crop production, and pasture management. The instructional objectives for both lecture and laboratory were printed under subject matter headings in the laboratory manual and presented on audiotapes for the soils students. Instructional objectives were presented on transparencies preceding lectures or as handouts distributed in advance of tests or at the beginning of the semester for the two crops courses. Eighty‐four percent of the soils students used the objectives to prepare for quizzes and more than three‐fourths responded that objectives were essential or very useful for efficient use of test preparation time, for satisfactory test performance, and for mastering the subject matter. Similarly, the majority of crops students agreed that objectives emphasized important subject matter and facilitated organization, understanding, and mastery of subject matter. Although two‐thirds or more of the crops students responded that they used the objectives for test preparation, the majority of these students disagree that the objectives helped students perform well on exams and minimized the time required for test preparation. Revision of the instructional objectives to include descriptions of the information or conditions available to the learner and/or descriptions of the criteria for acceptable student performance, in addition to more specific verbs for the learner behavior expected, contributed to student response shifts from disagreement to agreement that objectives helped student test performance and that tests fairly evaluated mastery of objectives. More skillful instructor implementation of objectives explained generally more positive attitudes toward objectives for the soils compared to the crops students.