Form Over Substance: Learning Objectives In The Business Core
Main Article Content
Keywords
learning objectives, student learning, assessment
Abstract
While members of the business faculty community have been advocating active learning in the classroom, it appears that textbooks encourage learning from a passive perspective. A review of learning objectives from 16 textbooks used in Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Finance, and Marketing demonstrates a focus on basically the same set of primary verbs at a low cognitive level. These low cognitive level verbs differ in substance from the expectations contained in the end-of-the-chapter materials. In a world of assessment, the authors are concerned that the textbook learning objectives seem to focus on the form of technical content and not the substance of student learning.