ABSTRACT
Learning involves not only understanding where one is coming from but where one is going. On the whole, students learn better if they have some sense of direction. This allows them to concentrate their attention and focus their efforts on what they should know or be able to do by the end of the learning event. For this reason, teachers and trainers are usually advised to identify the objectives or intended learning outcomes of their sessions and share these with the students at the beginning. Such objectives also allow students to break down large learning tasks into more manageable and less daunting stages. In general terms, we can say that the teacher needs to orient his or her students, both at the level of the course and the class, although that advice has to be qualified in various ways that will be spelled out below. However, orientation remains a good, general principle that you need to have equally good reasons for ignoring.
