What do you, as a participant, hope to get out of a course, seminar, or workshop? What goals or expectations do you wish to satisfy? Goal Ranking & Matching is designed to help make goals and expectations visible to yourself and to assist you in discussing them with others, including the seminar presenter or course leader. If you do this exercise as a seminar presenter yourself, it also reveals the match between your goals and those of your audience.

This assessment is best done at or near the beginning of a course because it allows the professor or leader to adjust the syllabus explicitly to include student interests. Interested students get hooked, become active learners, and learn more. For this to be useful to a professor, there must be a flexibility and willingness to ponder such questions as, "How well do student goals match with the those that the professor thinks are most important?" "Are the professor's goals significantly broader than those of the students?" "Do the students' estimates of difficulty, detail, and complexity match those of the professor?"

A professor can help students achieve some goals and connect them to the main course outline by incorporating special projects and group work into overall course design. And, if some goals just can't be realized, an early, honest response can align expectations in a positive way and prevent disappointments.

----T.A. Angelo and K. P. Cross, 1993. Classroom Assessment Techniques, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass., p. 290-4.

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Goal Ranking & Matching

Sample Form: Goal Ranking & Matching

1. In the spaces below, please write 2-5 goals you hope to achieve ---specific things you want to learn--- by participating in this course or seminar.

What you want to learn?RankIs it also the presenter's goal?
      Yes           No      
      Yes           No      
      Yes           No      
      Yes           No      
      Yes           No      

2. Use the middle column to rank your goals in terms of their relative importance to you. The most important goal is ranked #1, the next most important #2, etc.

3. When you hear the presenter's goals, circle Yes in the right hand column next to each of your matching goals, regardless of rank. If you end up with goals left over, circle the appropriate No in the right hand column.

4. Prepare to mention or ask questions about any of your important goals that are not also in the presenter's list.