In the first-class curriculum review, many experts reported that the teachers' curriculum goals were written in a variety of ways. Some goals were too macro and included all curriculum goals, including “cultivating socialist successors". Some teachers moved the original words of ”curriculum thinking and politics" into the curriculum goals, and some teachers directly wrote the syllabus into the curriculum.Goals... how should I write course goals?

Curriculum goals (some schools or in some articles, it is also called learning goals) are a description of students' learning output and the specific goals and intentions to be achieved in the curriculum. It is a clear description of what students can do after passing the course of study. Therefore, in the design (or determination) of course objectives, behavioral verbs should generally be used. Actionable and evaluable course goals often consist of one or more behavioral verbs.

The Bloom cognitive model can provide us with certain guidelines or help. In 1956, the famous American educational psychologist Professor Bloom proposed an educational goal classification system, which divides human cognition and learning development into six categories. These six types of learning from “low-level” to “high-level” are: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. Among them, “remembering” and "understanding“ are called ”low-level learning“, and the remaining four are called ”high-level learning."

There is an article in Higher Engineering Education Research (Gong Jianmin, Xiao Beilu. SyllabusFormulate. Research on Advanced Engineering Education, 2020,3), there is an example table of the six competency meanings, example words and learning goals (what we call curriculum goals) of the Bloom cognitive model in this article, which is very enlightening for us to determine curriculum goals scientifically and rationally. The display is as follows：

 

As can be seen from the examples given in the table, the difficulty requirements of the “course goals” are constantly increasing as they move from the low-level to the higher-level step by step. Different behavioral verbs can tell people about the different requirements of students' abilities. It must correspond to different teaching and learning methods, as well as different assessment (or examination) methods.

 

01 The curriculum goals come from the graduation requirements of the courses in the training program

According to the definition of “course goals” in Baidu Encyclopedia, it is divided into：

Broad curriculum objectives: positioned in the relationship between education and society, it is a relatively large perspective and covers a full range of levels. It is educational intent, including “educational policy”, ”Educational objectives“, ”Training objectives“, ”Curriculum teaching objectives“ and ”Teaching objectives", and teaching objectives include grade teaching objectives, unit teaching objectives, and class time teaching objectives.

Narrow curriculum goals: The relationship between education and students positioned within education is a relatively narrow and specific perspective. Its coverage is specific and mainly refers to ”educational goals". In a narrow sense, curriculum goals only include “educational goals”, “training goals”, “curriculum teaching goals” and “teaching goals”.

But it's still too abstract, so what is the goal of the course?

Curriculum goals refer to the requirements of knowledge, ability, and quality that students need to achieve after completing this course, that is, we write curriculum goals in accordance with the requirements of the student training program.

According to the requirements of the Ministry of Education, the curriculum objectives should be combined with the positioning of the school, the student situation, and the requirements for the training of professional talents, and specifically describe the level of knowledge and ability that should be achieved after studying this course.

On the basis of combining the analysis of academic sentiment, we can describe the curriculum goals from the output orientation and clarify the graduation requirements of the curriculum in the professional training program. It is also possible to describe the gains (output-oriented) of students after studying the course in terms of knowledge, ability, and quality in accordance with the classification of Bloom's teaching goals. The goal is clear and conforms to the SMART principle of “measurable, achievable, fruitful, and time-limited”. Simple understanding means that learners can easily understand and know what to do, how to do it, and to what extent.

 

02 Curriculum objectives and requirements for first-class courses

In accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Education for first-class courses, the curriculum goals need to be met：

1. In line with the school's positioning and talent training goals, adhere to Lide Shuren.

Many teachers write directly when they write curriculum goals: knowledge, ability, and quality goals, but the philosophy of colleges and universities is different, and there are differences in students' graduation requirements. At the same time, it needs to be consistent with the requirements of the training program. Finally, curriculum goals need to be integrated into curriculum thinking.

2. Adhere to the organic integration of knowledge, ability and quality, pay attention to improving the high-level nature of the curriculum, highlighting the innovation of the curriculum, and increasing the degree of challenge of the curriculum, so as to meet the requirements of students' comprehensive ability to solve complex problems.

The curriculum goals can start from the high-level nature of first-class courses, and pay attention to the curriculum to meet the requirements of “gender balance”. When we write course goals, we need to describe them in terms of knowledge, ability, and quality.

3. The goal description is accurate and specific, corresponding to the needs of the country, industry, and profession, in line with the law of training, in line with the school situation and academic situation, the path to achievement is clear, and it is easy to evaluate and evaluate.

When writing the curriculum goals, it is also necessary to combine social development and advanced fields of the industry to put forward “advanced” requirements for the curriculum. When describing the objectives of the course, it is also necessary to make the students' learning more accurate, measurable, quantifiable, and achievable.

03 How should the course objectives be written?

(1) Knowledge goals

The knowledge goal is related to the syllabus of the course, and the content of the syllabus is combined to sort out the knowledge level requirements that need to be achieved after the course is completed. For example: systematically master the basic theories, concepts, methods, etc. in the course (specific); through systematic learning of the course, you can fully understand the content of XXXX；

Case 1: The knowledge goals of this course are: broaden the basic knowledge of computers, including the basic principles, technologies and methods of computers, as well as new computer technologies and computer development trends; improve computer application capabilities: focus on the basic knowledge and application of network, multimedia, database and other technologies; understand information security and program designBasic knowledge of aspects.

Case 2: By understanding the complete engineering practice activities such as design, manufacturing, operation, and management in the large-scale engineering chain, systematically master the basic management theory, management methods, and other general management knowledge in the engineering project.

Case 3: Taking the historical process of the development of European architecture as a clue, distinguish the artistic characteristics of architecture in different periods, strengthen core knowledge and cutting-edge theoretical learning, and expand students' horizons and broad interdisciplinary knowledge.

(2) Skill goals

Skill goals refer to the improvement of related abilities involved in this course, such as: organizational ability, analytical ability, collaboration ability, adaptability, writing ability, expression ability, ability to distinguish and use information, computer operation, data processing, etc. When writing course goals, it is necessary to reflect the skills that students should master after graduation.

Case 1: By training students in the general management skills of communication, team, leadership, and self-management required to solve complex engineering practice problems, students are equipped with efficient organization and management of engineering tasks and process management capabilities of analysis, judgment, decision-making, and innovation.

Case 2: Through the study of this course, students can understand the grammatical rules of computer language and the basic structure of algorithms, master the methods of structured and modular programming, establish the logical thinking concept of programming, and achieve the goal of using computers to solve practical problems, so as to have the preliminary ability to use high-level languages to program, forLay the foundation for solving complex software engineering problems.

Case 3: Analyze the influencing factors of the development of architectural styles in Europe at various times, evaluate their influence on the development of modern architecture, and cultivate students' aesthetic and appreciation skills, communication and learning skills, critical thinking, practice and innovation skills, deep learning and independent learning skills.

(3) Quality goals

Human quality is the subjective quality of human beings developed and formed through education and social practice activities on the basis of natural endowments, that is, the systematic integration of human moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic and other qualities and their expressive abilities. Therefore, the quality goal is the process of educating people in the curriculum, not the transfer of knowledge and ability training. The quality goal needs to have a process of development.

Case 1: Quality goals: At the same time, combined with the construction goals and requirements of ideological and political thinking in college courses, the teaching process emphasizes the establishment of students' professional ethics in pharmacy positions and the ethics of pharmaceutical research, and requires students to be familiar with and strictly follow the ethical responsibilities in drug development, production and use, and have the ability to connect theory with reality and seek truth from facts.Work style and scientific and rigorous work attitude.

Case 2: Quality objectives: Take traditional Chinese medicine curriculum thinking and politics as the main line, comprehend the blend of traditional Chinese medicine and culture, strengthen cultural self-confidence, consolidate professional thinking, enhance national pride, and possess the ability to spread and promote traditional Chinese medicine culture internationally.

Case 3: Through the ideological and political study of the curriculum, cultivate students' pursuit of excellence and hard work and pragmatism; based on disciplines and industry fields, they can become socialist successors with an international perspective, national sentiment, and mission responsibility.