FORMULATING COURSE OBJECTIVES | CONSCIOUS-COMPETENCE MATRIX

FORMULATING COURSE OBJECTIVES

WRITING THE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Because adult learners are task-centered, adult training should be task-centered. Consequently, adult learning should be based on measurable, task-centered learning objectives and outcomes. Inherent to good instructional design is the definition of clear learning outcomes.

What Are Learning Objectives?

Dr. Robert Mager, a well known-figure in Training Design, defines learning objectives in this way:

“[Learning] Objectives are a little like blueprints. They provide the guides that will guarantee that you are teaching what needs to be taught. An objective is about end rather than means. It describes a product of instruction rather than the process of instruction. It describes what students will be able to do when they are competent, rather than describing how they will be made competent.”

The Conscious Competence Matrix –

The Learning Model for Formulating Training Objectives

Conscious Competence refers to the level of ability (or inability) by which one may perform a task. This task can be anything, from something abstract such as planning a framework for writing a report, all the way to the execution of a physical task such as the operation of a jackhammer. 

The Conscious Competence Model (CCM) consists of a four -level framework that uses two criteria - Consciousness and Competence - to determine a level of proficiency someone has in performing a task or operation. These Four Levels of Conscious Competence delineate milestones of progress whereby students start at a bottom level of relative inability (incompetence) and rise upward to a top level of full ability (competence).

 The Conscious Competence Matrix provides several obvious benefits for both trainer and students: The progression is from quadrant 1 through 2 and 3 to 4. It is not possible to jump stages. For some skills, especially advanced ones, people can regress to previous stages, particularly from 4 to 3, or from 3 to 2, if they fail to practice and exercise their new skills. A person regressing from 4, back through 3, to 2, will need to develop again through 3 to achieve stage unconscious competence again.

Teachers and trainers commonly assume trainees to be at stage 2, and focus effort towards achieving stage 3, when often trainees are still at stage 1. The trainer assumes the trainee is aware of the skill existence, nature, relevance, deficiency, and benefit offered from the acquisition of the new skill. Whereas trainees at stage 1 - unconscious incompetence - have none of these things in place, and will not be able to address achieving conscious competence until they've become consciously and fully aware of their own incompetence. This is a fundamental reason for the failure of a lot of training and teaching.

At the fifth level is ‘reflective competence' which is 'Conscious competence of unconscious competence', which describes a person's ability to recognize and develop unconscious incompetence in others. There are plenty of people who become so instinctual at a particular skill that they forget the theory - because they no longer need it - and as such make worse teachers than someone who has a good ability at the conscious competence stage. That is, when the person continues to practice the skill which has become automatic and second nature, but, over time, allows bad habits to form. For example, an exemplary driver makes a silly mistake. Or, a trainer, believing himself or herself to be an expert, fails to prepare adequately for a training session and drops a clanger. These are the dangers of thinking you can do something so easily, you become complacent. 

Complacency can also cause problems if the person doesn't keep up-to-date with the skill. As techniques and approaches move forward, the person remains behind using set methods which have perhaps become stale, out-dated or less relevant to today. In each case above the person must reassess personal competence (perhaps against a new standard) and step back to the conscious competence stage until mastery is attained once again.