Abstract: Course and learning objectives are important tools for setting goals, navigating the course, and measuring performance. Unfortunately, when multiple interrelated objectives are presented as a list of statements, students perceive them as having little utility and tend to misunderstand or ignore them. To increase students’ attention to course objectives, to help them understand the arc, structure, and valuable outcomes of the course, and to engage in active learning, we propose an approach to presenting course objectives in a visual form. The evidence suggests that visualized objectives increased students’ interest in understanding them and provided aids to instructors to better explain how various components of the course fit together and translate into marketable skills. We recommend practical steps for visualizing objectives in any course and present examples of visualizations in two IS courses – “Enterprise Architecture” and “Systems Analysis and Design.”

Keywords: Active learning, Bloom’s taxonomy, Course development models, Job skills, Learning goals & outcomes, Teaching tip, Visualization

Download this article: JISE - Volume 31 Issue 4, Page 260.pdf

Recommended Citation: Babik, D. & Lending, D. (2020). Teaching Tip: Visualizing IS Course Objectives and Marketable Skills. Journal of Information Systems Education, 31(4), 260-268.