Performance Improvement • Volume 44 • Number 9 5

COMMENTARY

At 81 years old, Robert F. (Bob) Mager is the granddaddy of modernperformance analysis and instructional design techniques. While heis now mostly retired from the profession, he is still actively learningand learning to be active. He is a fiction writer, currently working on

his fourth novel. Not only that, he is an award-winning ventriloquist and is tak-ing flamenco lessons.

Perhaps best known in the training and development community as one of thefounders of the National Society for Performance Improvement (NSPI, now ISPI),Bob Mager is the author of more than 10 best-selling books, including PreparingInstructional Objectives, Analyzing Performance Problems, and Goal Analysis.His groundbreaking training workshops in Criterion-Referenced Instruction (CRI)methodology continue to be given around the world. Mager was recently namedthe recipient of the 2005 Public Service Award by the Society for theAdvancement of Behavior Analysis for his outstanding contribution to the fieldof performance analysis and instructional design.

Mager was one of the first to recognize that training was not always the appropri-ate prescription for problems in performance. “If they can do it if you hold a gunto their heads, it’s not a performance problem,” he once said. He pioneered themethod of establishing objectives as the key to designing instruction in the1960s, and 40 years later his books and methods are still used to train instruc-tional designers. Preparing Instructional Objectives created such a revolution ininstructional methods that the state of California passed a bill requiring its teach-ers to write objectives to describe what they wanted their students to accomplish(Stull Act, 1972).

Mager quickly understood that simply declaring objectives was subject to misuseand even abuse. Given that objectives have to be clear and give measurable out-comes, Mager developed a simple yet effective five-step method to analyze andclarify the often fuzzy and abstract concepts of traditional goal-setting exercises(see sidebar on page 6). This resulted in Goal Analysis, which describes a tech-nique for turning fuzzy goal statements into rock-solid objectives. This becameone of the central principles of the CRI methodology and workshops.

Life in the Pinball Machine—Looking Back With Bob Magerby Ray Taylor

6 www.ispi.org • OCTOBER 2005

I had an opportunity to interview Mager at his home inCarefree, Arizona, by telephone. We talked at length aboutthe current state of education as well as the business oftraining and performance improvement.

RT: I recently read Preparing Instructional Objectives, whichhas a refreshing nonlinear approach but, at the same time,is very clear and concise. I can’t help but think you had a lotof fun writing this book.

BM: I swore that when I got my degree that I wouldn’t writeanything that didn’t have anything lighthearted in it, everagain. It was fun trying to format the book in the new pro-grammed instruction techniques.

RT: I can see that having fun learning is still important toyou even in retirement; you don’t seem to be slowing downat all. Having fun is also an important learning strategy inyour books. In fact, you are often quoted as saying,“Students learn to avoid the things they are hit with.”

BM: “Having fun” is a false goal because it is really aboutholding the student’s interest in what is being taught. “Fun”is a red herring that has caused the expenditure of millions

of dollars on gimmicks, games, and various techniques tokeep students awake in the classroom. It’s the wrong quest.The quest is to get the obstacles to learning out of the stu-dent’s way. So back to your question: Why aren’t studentshaving fun or why aren’t they enjoying themselves?Ironically, when students leave school after being alienated,we call them “dropouts” instead of “pushouts.”

RT: In terms of obstacles, in your book How to Turn LearnersOn…Without Turning Them Off I really got the sense thatteachers who are not active learners themselves are having anegative impact on their students. I was trying to figure outif it was this sort of thing that led you to your ideas on for-mative evaluation, or whether it was the other way around.

BM: I don’t think the two are related. My ideas about evalu-ation are simply to think hard about what you want studentsto accomplish, publish those intentions (in the form ofobjectives), and then evaluate by making sure students canactually make those accomplishments before being allowedto move forward to the next objective.

RT: We haven’t been very successful at adopting thatapproach.

BM: No, we haven’t. Not yet. It’s one of the forces that arepressing against any kind of significant change. This is alsothe typical classroom environment, where there are 30 or soreceivers each tuned to a different frequency, each trying tofigure out what is being said. It’s efficient from the point ofview of the administration, but it is bad teaching practicefrom the point of view of the student.

RT: Does this mean we should be getting away from theclassroom environment?

BM: It means changing the structure of the environment. Forexample, back in the ’60s, professor Ohmer Milton of theUniversity of Tennessee experimented by teaching twocourses in the same fashion, except that one group was notallowed to attend the lectures but had to show up for thetests. The group not allowed to attend class performed atleast as well as those who did. The study was repeated atother universities and with other subjects, with similarresults. The question those experiments raised was how weknow students can’t learn as well without us.

Little gems like that had a big impact on my thinking. As forclassrooms, if you have to stick within four walls, at leastyou can change the environment to be more conducive tolearning—you don’t have to have the desks in rows, with alecturer in the front of the class. Our [CRI] workshops beginwith an orientation session, after which everybody worksindividually toward accomplishing the first objective. Theinstructors provide resources, coaching, and feedback. Werefer to them as “course managers.”

Five Steps for Brainstorming and Clarifying Goals(adapted from Goal Analysis)

1. Write down each goal on a separate piece of paper. Keep the end inmind—the goal is the outcome, not the process. Don’t worry if thegoal is abstract or not observable, you’ll clarify that in the next step.

2. Write a list of activities and characteristics that would cause you toagree that the goal has been achieved. Remember, these statementshave to be observable. Combine or delete duplicates and cross offitems that aren’t necessary.

3. Here you might see that some of your items actually describe out-comes. Write each one down as a new goal on a separate piece ofpaper and repeat Step 2 until you have only one goal with a corre-sponding list of observable activities and characteristics on each page.Now look at these goals and decide which ones best describe the issueyou are trying to address. Can you combine or eliminate any goals?

4. Write a complete statement for each of the observable activities andcharacteristics of each goal. These statements should describeobservables (quality and/or quantity) that you will consider acceptable.These can be positive (must be present) or negative (not present).

5. Test each statement from Step 4 with the question, “If someone per-formed this activity or characteristic, is the goal achieved?” If you cananswer yes to each item on the list, then you are finished. If not, youhave left something out.

Performance Improvement • Volume 44 • Number 9 7

RT: With CRI, learners are very clear about the objectives,but in the typical classroom, goals or learning objectives areusually not clearly stated.

BM: Yes. In the CRI workshops, each student has a map ofthe course. Each of the modules (representing one objective)is shown on the map, with lines showing the relationshipsbetween the modules, so they know which units are subor-dinate to other units. They know what options they havewhen completing one unit in deciding which one to attacknext. We have a master chart and we sign off on the moduleonly after students have performed the objective accordingto the stated criterion, or beyond. The students take most ofthe control over the learning decisions.

RT: Do you think we could try applying human performanceprinciples to the education system?

BM: Of course we can apply human performance technol-ogy principles to government education, but I’m not sure itwill get us out of the mess; there are serious obstacles.Teachers’ unions, the uniform class period, grading on acurve, low expectations, and classroom practices are but afew examples.

RT: That brings me to a line you quoted in your memoir (Lifein the Pinball Machine) that made me laugh out loud:“Changing the educational system is a little like pissing inthe ocean to change its temperature.” So we seem to be in ano-win situation, but isn’t it really about accountability? Bythis I mean the system is not really accountable for learningoutcomes.

BM: To a degree, but the system is broken and I don’t seeany way of fixing it, short of starting over again. This is whyI am so much in favor of home schooling and other alterna-tive forms of education, even though they may not be per-fect alternatives. They provide competition to governmentschools. With competition, accountability will follow.

RT: Quebec has a partially subsidized private school systemthat sort of does the same thing. It costs less because thepublic school system is funded by the student count, so it isforced somewhat to compete. But there is also a powerfulteachers’ union that sees any alternative initiatives as athreat to their membership.

BM: Of course they do. They get paid by the teachers, notthe students or parents. Where is the incentive to care aboutstudent performance?

RT: It seems that students’ role in the system is dehumaniz-ing. We put the entire onus of performance on the student, andif he or she fails, we say it’s not our fault. We point to socioe-conomic or other environmental factors to explain why.

BM: Not to mention, “These students aren’t motivated.”And then we point our fingers at them and call them“dropouts.”

RT: When I returned to university, I took an experientiallearning course that took us through something similar toyour CRI methodology. The end result was that we had thetools to self-appropriate knowledge and to take responsibil-ity for what we know, regardless of the course or howunskilled a teacher might be.

BM: They taught you how to learn in spite of the system!

RT: Currently, dropout rates are way too high, and fully 90%of students with learning and other disabilities don’t makeit beyond secondary schooling. With your background inbehaviorism and psychology, you were pioneering what isknown now as constructivism, which some people see as theanswer. How do you feel about this?

BM: Constructivism didn’t exist when I started in this busi-ness. No matter the label, we are all interested in improvingthe performance of our students, both cognitive and behav-ioral. If we are not, we are in the wrong business. So ignorethe labels and focus on performance.

With regard to learning “disabilities,” you have to realizethat once you put a label on students claiming they’re dis-abled, the tendency is to make sure they are disabled to sup-port your labeling decision, after which the system willactually reward you for maintaining that label. Maybe it’snot deliberate, but there is a penchant for putting labels oneverything and not going back to the reason why we do it.

RT: I’d like to shift gears now and talk about the field of per-formance improvement. If we look at how Warren Buffet sys-tematically analyzes companies for value, it is clearlyperformance-based criteria, and a lot of companies are nowworking towards imitating that approach.

BM: The approach is long overdue. Think about this for amoment. Though many [university] faculty are highly com-petent in their chosen specialty, they have had no trainingwhatever in instructional design and implementation.Similarly, managers may know their jobs, but it’s unlikelythey have had training in how to manage those jobs. Forexample, it’s often the hot-shot salesperson who gets pro-moted to sales manager, not necessarily the person with thebest manager potential. The probability that he or shealready has the skills for that job are very low, as is the prob-ability that he or she will get training to learn the new skillsrequired. In addition, that individual probably doesn’t wantto leave the field to become a manager, where the sources ofreinforcement and reward will be stripped away. Eventually[executives] become very conscious of the fact that theydon’t know what they are doing.

So yes, performance improvement should be a goal of anorganization.

RT: But some companies seem to be getting on the perfor-mance bandwagon sometimes to push another agenda.

BM: That happens all the time. Take the word “objective.”Many people who use that word are simply attaching a newlabel to what they have been doing all along in the past.

RT: You talk a bit about hidden agendas in your memoir. Doyou have any advice for facing organizational politics?

BM: There are always hidden agendas. You and I, and every-one else, have hidden agendas. In the organization, youneed to find out what rewards people—what reinforcesthem—and work from there. If you are going into an organi-zation cold, be sure to spend time learning the organizationand getting familiar with the culture.

When I was consulting, I often would be asked to give a pre-sentation to management. When I asked them what theyexpected me to say, the response would often be, “Well, youknow, just do your thing.” They didn’t know what theywanted; they just heard my name. They wanted some of“it,” whatever that “it” was. I would often spend two orthree days talking and working with the workers, whichwould usually reveal the source of the problems. When theywere reluctant to have me talk to the workers, I alreadyknew what one of their problems was.

RT: Since you were one of the founders of ISPI, I’d like toknow if you think it is still relevant to the business environ-ment.

BM: To be blunt, I think the organization ought to be work-ing harder to be relevant to the business environment.

RT: Any other closing thoughts or advice for budding HPTconsultants and instructional designers?

BM: Try to get in tune with the reality of a situation beforeattempting to make changes to it. Remember, there arealways organizational politics, and, though cultures are dif-ferent, the people are the same in that they all respond to thesame laws of nature. So insist on time to ferret out the hid-den agendas, knowing that the same natural laws are oper-ating in all environments. You can then feel fully confidentthat you can walk into a place where they are doing some-thing you have never heard about or seen before and make apositive contribution.

Related Readings

Mager, R.F. (1968). Developing attitude towards learning or how to turn learners on...without turning them off.Torrance, CA: Fearon Publishers.

Mager, R.F. (1984). Analyzing performance problems (2nd ed). Belmont, CA: Pitman Management and Training.

Mager, R.F. (1984). Goal analysis (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA:Pitman Management and Training.

Mager, R.F. (1984). Measuring instructional results (2nded.). Belmont, CA: Pitman Learning.

Mager, R.F. (1984). Preparing instructional objectives (rev. 2nd ed.). Torrance, CA: Fearon Teacher Aids.

Mager, R.F. (1999). What every manager should knowabout training: An insider’s guide to getting your money’sworth from training (2nd ed.). Atlanta, GA: CEP Press.

Mager, R.F. (2003). Life in the pinball machine. Atlanta,GA: CEP Press.

Ray Taylor is an independent Internet technol-

ogy and communications consultant and perfor-

mance improvement technologist working in

Montreal, Canada. He has a BA in Communication

Studies and is currently completing his MA in

Educational Technology (HPT) at Concordia

University in Montreal. Among other things, Ray

has owned a graphic design studio specializing in “information performance,”

specifically in form design, typography, and other information documents.

From this base in design and communications, Ray has gone on to lead cul-

tural technology projects such as the AiPai Syllabic Computing project, a

foundational software initiative for the Inuit people of Arctic Quebec. He

designed and produced two high-quality syllabic font families, keyboard lay-

outs, and has worked on standardizing sort orders and other localization

parameters for the Inuktitut language. Ray also participates on the Standards

Council of Canada and ISO forums for the cultural adaptability of technology

and the development of various international standards. Currently, he is work-

ing on an e-learning project for volunteer leaders of community groups and

will be assuming the position of V. P. Membership for the Montreal chapter of

ISPI as of September 2005. Ray may be reached at randomroyalty@gmail.com.

8 www.ispi.org • OCTOBER 2005