Page 11 - Principles of instructional design

The Outcomes of Instruction 49
may be obtained by means of questionnaires that ask students what choices of
action they would make (or in some cases, did make) in a variety of situations.
There are, of course, technical problems in the use of self-reports for attitude
assessment. Since their intentions are rather obvious, students can readily make
s^lf-reports of choices that do not reflect realitv. However, when proper pre-
cautions are taken, such reports make possible the inference that a particular
attitude has been learned or modified in a particular direction.
Thus, the performance that is affected by an attitude is the choice of a course of
personal action. The tendency to make such a choice, toward a particular class of
objects, persons, or events, may be stronger in one student than in another. A
change in an attitude would be revealed as a change in the probability of
choosing a particular course of action on the part of the student. Continuing the
previous example, over a period of time or as a result of instruction, the
probability of choosing to listen to music may be altered. The observation of
such change would give rise to the inference that the student's attitude toward
listening to music had changed, that is, had become "stronger" in the positive
direction.

Human Capabilities as Course Goals
A single course of instruction usually has objectives that fit into several catego-
ries of human capability. The major categories, which cut across the "content"
of courses, are the five we have described. From the standpoint of the expected
outcomes of instruction, the major reason for distinguishing these five catego-
ries is that thev make possible different kinds of human performance.
For example, a course in elementary science may foresee as general objectives
such learning outcomes as (1) solving problems of velocity, time, and accelera-
tion; (2) designing an experiment to provide a scientific test of a stated
hypothesis; or (3) valuing the activities of science. Number one obviously
names intellectual skills and, therefore, implies some performances involving
intellectual operations the student can show he can do. Number two pertains to
the use of cognitive strategies since it implies that the student will need to exhibit
this complex performance in a novel situation, where little guidance is provided
in the selection and use of rules and concepts he has previously learned. Number
three has to do with an attitude, or possibly with a set of attitudes, that will be
exhibited in behavior as choices of actions directed toward science activities.
The human capabilities distinguished in these five categories also differ from
each other in another highly important way. They each require a different set of
learning conditions for their efficient learning. The conditions necessary for
learning these capabilities efficiently, and the distinctions among these con-
ditions, constitute the subjects of the next two chapters. There, we give an
account of the conditions of learning that apply to the acquisition of each of
these kinds of human capability, beginning with intellectual skills and cognitive
strategies and following with the remaining three categories.