Short-Term Objectives

Description of the Strategy

Short-term objectives are descriptions of performance or behavior that are used to represent the desired outcomes of learning interventions. Like long-term [Page 1520]objectives, they are the focal point of a treatment or lesson plan and provide a starting point for instructional design as well as a framework for developing appropriate assessments and evaluations. Typically, all objectives are expected to contain at least five component statements: (1) content to be learned, (2) behavior the student will display to illustrate that the learning has occurred, (3) conditions under which the behaviors will be displayed, (4) criteria for acceptable performance, and (5) the amount of time a student has in which to learn an objective. Term refers to the amount of time the student will be allowed to work on the material and the amount or complexity of the material to be specified in the objective.

Long-term and short-term objectives differ from each other in the scope of the content they represent and the duration of the instruction they allow. In terms of scope, short-term objectives call for the mastery of more specific content, or of less total content, than long-term objectives. In terms of duration, short-term objectives specify less time for completion than do long-term objectives, although no set time frame exists. By tradition, and in part by the influence of special education policy, short-term objectives have typically been thought of as covering 1 month's to 6 weeks' worth of instructional time or content.

Because short-term objectives define fairly specific learning outcomes, they have certain obvious advantages. One of these is that, if they are written in behavioral terms, they are easy to understand and fit well into the framework of daily or weekly lessons. Therefore, they are more direct guides to daily instruction than are long-term objectives. They also facilitate communication, making it easier for multiple personnel to read and put into operation the same set of expectations.

Short-term objectives have some disadvantages. First, they may be more time consuming to produce, as they require several steps to cover the same material as a single long-term objective. Second, some areas of content may not lend themselves as easily to subdivision as others. Finally, a full list of short-term objectives may not provide an adequate representation of some tasks, and as a result, generalization among the short-term objectives may not occur.

Many of the problems listed can be controlled through the use of a system such as management by an objective that coordinates the flow of instruction as it shifts from one outcome to another. In addition, concerns about missing the bigger picture and becoming bogged down in details can be alleviated by paying explicit instructional attention to generalization (i.e. by writing short-term objectives so that they lead to generalized outcomes).

One technique for setting short-term objectives for students who are behind is to look closely at the materials that they would need to master to catch up with their same-age peers. For example, suppose that 9 months of instruction are left in the school year, and the reading book has 360 pages. The student is a full year behind and must read this year's book and last year's book to be caught up with his peers by the end of the year. Last year's book has 240 pages, which means that the student has a total of 600 pages to read in 9 months, or 50 pages a month. Therefore, the short-term objective could call for the student to read 50 pages each month.

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