Connect Outcomes, Objectives and Competencies

Video Transcription

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today we're going to look at connecting outcomes, objectives, and competencies specifically to those standards when we are creating a lesson. For today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by Benjamin Franklin, which states, "The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy."

And I think that this applies. Today we're going to be learning about all that is true and good and ways to help improve our curriculum process. By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to understand the connection between content standards, ISTE standards, and outcomes, objectives, and competencies.

Now when we look at defining the elements, we're going to break down a couple of these words just so you understand how we're using them for the purposes of this lesson. Often times, these terms like objectives and outcomes can be interchangeably used so it's really hard to determine how standard skills, objectives, outcomes, all of those are connected. So we're going to take a look at the definitions. And then a Venn diagram to help provide some visual support on the intersections and how all of these elements come together when we are developing, of course, our unit or lesson plans.

So the first thing we're going to look at is standard. So when we talk about a standard, what we are doing is we're looking at what the student is expected to know by the end of the year. This is often provided from an external source almost always. It's not one that you establish. And standards can be written as content knowledge or they can be written as a competency, which is more skill-based. So these standards are often large and all encompassing. And since they deal with the end of the year, they often need to be broken down into smaller parts such as objectives, I can statements, and the such.

Next up when we talk about skills, what we're looking at is what a student should be able to do. Skills are almost always written as objectives. And so you'll see that as we go through. An objective is often framed as students will be able to. Right. It's what the student is expected to do by the end of the lesson or a shorter unit. So the instructional time is just a little bit different as opposed to the outcome. That describes what a student should be able to do by the end of that longer unit. And outcomes are almost always connected to those objectives. We always want to link them back to the objectives and the standards.

Finally, when we discuss competencies, those are much more general. And those are developed by the instructor. So competencies are developed by the teacher based on the standards. But they can focus more on a specific unit-- the skills that students should be able to master that are connected to the knowledge by the end of that unit.

So let's go ahead and take a look at all of these connections in a Venn diagram. On one side of the Venn diagram, we have the content. Those are things like subject standards. On the other side, we have skills. Those are things like the ISTE standards, math practice standards, application standards, and the like, all of those standards that have to do with specific skills as opposed to content and knowledge. Then in the middle where they overlap is where you are able to develop the objectives, the outcomes, and the competencies. This is where the skills and the content meet. And the conjunction helps us to create elements that incorporate both content and skills into our lesson planning.

Now I'm going to walk you through a couple of different examples. For our first content standard that we're going to look at, I've chosen a standard from the foreign language standards, standards 2.1, which states students should demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and the perspectives of the culture studied.

So after I've chosen this content standard, I am going to look and see if I can find one of those ISTE standards which fits well with this content standard. And the one I've chosen is number three for the students standards, which is research and information fluency, stating that students will apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.

In my mind, I think that these two fit nicely together because it's focusing on students gathering that digital research and information and then presenting what they found on that relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied and their own. Knowing that I'm going to bridge these two together, I can use them to develop my student outcomes. And I've created two here.

In the "I can" statements, that is a student is saying it and taking ownership, I can use digital tools to research my cultures, practices, and perspectives, and the practices and perspectives of another culture. And then I can use digital tools to create a presentation of the comparisons and contrasts between those two cultures. So I'm not only combining both the ISTE standards and the content standard, but I'm breaking it down into two different ones, both the research element and that presentation element.

Let's take a look at another example of this. This time we're going to focus in on math, particularly math in the elementary levels. For the content standard, I've chosen from the Common Core Math standards a third grade standard which states overarching that students will represent and interpret data.

I've aligned this content standard with the ISTE standard for creativity and innovation, stating that students will demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technologies. I think that these align really nicely together because I'm looking one on the math side at representing and interpreting data and on the technology side on using technology to develop, and demonstrate, and construct that knowledge.

So let's look at how we've taken these two elements together to create our student outcomes. We have four very simple, because again we're working with elementary students here, simply stated student outcomes. I can interpret a bar graph on paper and digitally. And then I can create a bar graph using paper and digital programs.

Why I've used paper and digital here is that a lot of times, especially when we're dealing with these younger grades, teachers will want to take students step by step in creating these elements. And then I can interpret pictographs on paper and digitally as well as I can create pictographs using paper and digital programs. We focused in on two different types of data, both having students focus on interpreting that data as well as representing it and creating it.

Now let's look at one final example of this, this time using English language arts. And we're going to use a high school standard for English language arts to see kind of what the differences are between those two different grade levels. So for this content standard, I've used the Common Core English Language Arts Standard for 9th through 10th grade, which states that students will be able to cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support the analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. So you can see already in the content standard we have something that's much more complex.

However, I, and this might come from being a language arts teacher, really feel like language arts aligns really nicely with the technology standards. So let's take a look at which technology standard I've chosen. I've looked at number two, which is communication and collaboration, broken down and edited for space, which basically states students will use digital media to communicate and work collaboratively to help support their individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.

So already my mind is moving and thinking I can have students looking at that text and then presenting it in a digital format while working with other people perhaps in a group to help come together, and make arguments, and then find support for those arguments in whatever text it is that we're reading there are a lot of different technologies that can be used to do this. So from those two elements, I've created the student outcomes which say I can analyze what the text says explicitly and draw inferences from what is not said explicitly. That draws directly from the content standard.

And I can cite specific sources to back up my analysis of the text, again drawing directly from the content standard, as well as a student outcome that draws from the technology standard. I can use digital media to communicate this analysis. So we're pulling from both of those standards to help create our student outcomes for the lesson.

Now that you've reached the end of the lesson, you are able to understand the connection between content standards, ISTE standards, and outcomes, objectives, and competencies. Now that we've reached the end of the lesson, I want you to take just a moment and think about what is the first step you would take as you begin looking at all of these various elements together and developing your lesson plans.

To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the additional resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply the course material.