Assignment: Learning Styles

As faculty members, you have been asked to design a 4-hour Leadership Strategies course that would accommodate the learning styles for a selected 10 students. The students have all completed a learning style inventory in which three of the students are determined visual learners, four are kinesthetic learners, and the rest are auditory learners.

Note: The intended audience for the course can be either newly graduated nurses or experienced staff nurses as you choose.

Compose a 1,000-1,250-word paper which describes your plan to accommodate the learning styles of each student. This plan starts with defining course objectives; use the "A-B-C-D Method of Writing Objectives" resource as a guide.

The objectives should incorporate Bloom's taxonomy, be written at the appropriate level for the audience, and include at least two learning domains (cognitive, psychomotor, and affective). Make sure to include the following:

1.An outline of the course content and agenda that will be covered. 2.Descriptions of the learning activities and the rationale for the learning activities selected

3.Strategies to assess learning, based on the learner objectives

4.Use at least three scholarly, peer-reviewed resources less than 5 years old in addition to the course materials.

A-B-C-D Approach to Objective Writing

Writing objectives is much like writing outcomes in the nursing process. Objectives must be measurable, contain action verbs, be specific, include timelines, and indicate the degree to which you expect the leaner to achieve.

A helpful formula to write objectives is the A-B-C-D approach:

• Audience: Who is the audience for the class? Is it a student nurse? A staff nurse? A participant in a class?

• Behavior: What do I want the audience to accomplish by the end of the class? An example of a behavior is being able to identify the signs and symptoms of infection.

• Condition: How will students demonstrate mastery and be assessed in their learning? An example could be that students will demonstrate their knowledge of a lab or clinical area by taking a written test.

• Degree: How well will students perform their new knowledge? Should students be able to identify all signs and symptoms of infection, or would it be satisfactory if they identified only two symptoms?

A sample objective that illustrates these points is: "After reading this lecture (condition), the graduate student in the nurse educator track (audience) will be able to write an objective (behavior) using the A-B-C-D approach (degree)."

The above objective dictates that the student will be able to write an objective, as opposed to discussing or identifying it. Since the objective says "write," the student must write an objective to meet this objective. If the objective instead said: "List the components of a complete learner objective," the appropriate evaluation would require that the student list the A-B-C-D; whereas the objective "describe the components" would have students describe the meaning of each A-B-C-D step. Well-written objectives will dictate the evaluation process.