Tomorrow begins the next class I am teaching–Foundations of Training I. I wrote the syllabus for this course, which is offered through New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies, in the Center for Instructional Design and Corporate Training. This is the second time the course has been offered, and I am excited to teach it again.

I just updated the syllabus, and thought it may be interesting to share it here. While this copy will most certainly be revised and tweaked over the next four weeks, I am musing about the objectives.

I am an instructional designer, so my daily work often is in and around learning objectives. However, as a result of the class I just took with Stephen Brookfield, I am musing about the concept of objectives themselves, especially whose objectives those are on the syllabus (mine), and how I am going to expect my students to meet those objectives (though I have not discussed this with them nor yet received their buy-in). While this is common educational practice, we often use objectives to demonstrate what was learned, as if learning in all its complexity can be easily measured. While I hope this technical training and workplace learning and performance content gets learned, how will I know who will learn what in the class? I can only hope the subject matter on my syllabus is among the learnings my students walk away with, but I believe learning is complex and often occurs in unexpected ways and at times and places that can never be fully planned for nor directed.