Research on effective teaching and learning shows that when students set and monitor their own learning goals, it significantly narrows achievement gaps. While teacher-written objectives are important for clarity, when these objectives are re-written as personal statements, they evolve from what a teacher needs to teach to what students want to…

The success and satisfaction of students with online courses is significantly impacted by the sequencing of learning objectives and activities. Equally critical is designing online degree programs and structuring multiple courses to reduce learners' cognitive load and attain maximum learning success. In its current form, the evaluation of program…

The aims of university System Dynamics (SD) programs include the mastery of systems thinking skills, modeling skills, and/or application to solving real-world, dynamic, complex problems. Existing research has articulated learning sequences of what learners should know and be able to do, and when. It is called the competence development framework…

This study evaluated syllabi (N = 87) from introductory advertising and public relations courses to examine to what extent and how stated course goals and assignments signal the overall learning orientation of a course and which type of learning orientation--mastery or performance--was most common. Mastery orientations emphasize intrinsic rewards,…

The 2017 Supreme Court decision "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" highlighted the importance of monitoring students' progress toward appropriately challenging individualized educational program (IEP) annual goals and making changes to students' educational programs when needed. The process for setting an IEP goal should be…

According to accreditation and professional bodies, evaluation and grading are a high priority in counselor education. Specifications grading, an evaluative tool, can be used to increase grading rigor. This article describes the components of specifications grading and applies the framework of specifications grading to a counseling theories course.

This article focuses on the grade-level outcomes to be assessed on middle school (grades 6-8) physical education. Specifically, the article describes how to teach basic tactics and strategies while applying fundamental movement patterns to the various game and movement categories (invasion, net/wall, target, fielding/striking, dance/rhythms, &…

This article addresses teaching for skill and knowledge competency in high school based on the National Standards and grade-level outcomes. The outcomes guide teachers away from a curriculum that emphasizes competition through team sports, which appeals to just the highly-skilled and competitive students, toward one that is inclusive of all skill…

How can history teachers structure learning pathways through historical content in ways that engage and challenge all pupils, that enable them to work at an appropriate pace and that also encourage pupils to self-assess and monitor their own progress? Stainer reports and reflects on classroom experiments in "Mastery Learning" that aimed…

This paper discusses a pilot study of the effects of a curriculum focus intervention on students' prealgebra achievement. Elements of the intervention include identification of high-priority learning objective; structured repeatable testing; and a coherent, rubric-based feedback component. This research differs from traditional mastery learning…

This 10 unit manual introduces the concepts and components of mastery learning and helps instructors organize mastery learning courses of their own. Unit I introduces mastery learning as a process involving the development and presentation of objectives, homework, formative evaluation, corrective assignments, evaluation retakes, and summative…

The development of an instructional package for use with selected readings in a cultural anthropology course at the College of Marin is outlined in this paper. Introductory material indicates that an effort was made to create a learning package based on formal objectives spanning the readings in the course text, to respond to student needs, and to…

Aspects of the Total-System Design (TSD) approach to instructional design in medical laboratory science that was implemented at Creighton University are described. In a four-year project, TSD principles were used to produce the uniform, systematic, and complete definition of a medical technology major within a program of study leading to the…

Thirty special education teachers were assigned to a dynamic-goal or static-goal curriculum-based measurement group, or a control group. Results with their 60 mildly/moderately handicapped students showed that dynamic goal teachers increased goals more frequently and employed more ambitious goals, and their students had better content mastery than…

During the past two decades, there have been several highly visible developments in education, including behavioral objectives, criterion-referenced test interpretations, the mastery model in instruction, performance-based instructional programs, competency testing, and accountability. This paper is an attempt to weave these various developments…