As a class assignment, I developed an instructional treatment plan for the following objective: Given a virtual working environment, avoid communication problems between virtual team members when working on a project.

We chose Nelson's Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) model because team skills are a higher order thinking activity. Nelson says CPS is not appropriate for memorized or procedural tasks and a CRT item would be "waste precious instructional time" and that "CPS is most appropriate when there is not a single answer to a question or best way of doing something" (Reigeluth, 1999, p. 247).

CPS was also chosen because the collaborative element in a virtual environment forces the students to experience the very topic they're studying and writing about. Each of the process activities in CPS is a small assessment of the enabling objectives since the group can't move on to complete the assignment until they have normed, agreed on the problem, defined roles, etc. I thought the true assessment of the enabling objectives would be performed as part of the debriefing, reflection, and discussion at the end of the unit.

Many texts have the condition, behavior, and criteria/degree elements of objectives (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2005, pp. 123-139; Kubiszyn & Borich, 2003, p. 82; Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek 2006, p. 129; Stolovitch & Keeps, 1999, p. 356) and that Hirumi added audience (2005, ¶ 6). We tried to follow the samples in Dick, et al. (2005, p. 139), for the condition/degree of assessing intellectual skills by specifying things like "at least five peer-reviewed journals" in the sample assessment rubric. The other assessment rubric items were modeled from Dr. Hirumi's performance criteria for this assignment and peer evaluation for the end of the course.

I believe I can ask the question, "could I observe the learner doing this?" (Kubiszyn et al., 2003, p. 80; Dick et al., 1999, p. 127) to each of the objectives we listed in the treatment plan as part of the measurable behavior component of the objectives. Granted, the observation would not have an associated percentage completion or accuracy, but that goes back to the complexity of multiple solution theory in CPS. Dick et al, p. 139 has several samples without a CRT item as the assessment criterion for intellectual skill objectives.

Ways to improve the treatment plan are to include some of the degree elements from the assessment rubric earlier in the objectives, add more description and content to the instructional events, create an activity for forming and norming teams and an activity for role selection, and investigate taking some fuzziness out of the objectives.

References

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2005). The systematic design of instruction (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Allyn and Bacon.

Hirumi, A. (2005, August 1). Unit 4: Performance objectives supplement. Retrieved September 9, 2005, from http://webct.ucf.edu/eme6613c/Unit04/u04info.html

Kubiszyn, T., & Borich, G. (2003). Educational testing and Measurement: Classroom application and practice (7th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley / Jossey-Bass Education.

Reigeluth, C. (1999). Instructional-design theories and models: 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2006). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Stolovitch, H. D., & Keeps, E. J. (eds.). (1999). Handbook of human performance technology: Improving individual and organizational performance worldwide (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass / Pfeiffer