As Robert Gagné described, the instructional events (gaining attention, informing the learner of the learning outcome, stimulating recall of prerequisites, presenting the material, providing learning guidance, eliciting the performance, providing feedback, assessing performance, and enhancing retention and transfer) represent what should be done to ensure that learning occurs. If you address each instructional event, you will have a solid foundation for creating effective instructional materials. You will need to determine what will be done for each instructional event for each learning outcome.
Gaining Attention
Gain attention by getting the students involved and motivated. Ideas for gaining attention were presented earlier within the ARCS model of motivation above.
Consider using an interesting animation or video on the title page and first screen of each lesson. This is called an attract sequence. Note that video tends to be more effective than still images in gaining attention.
Remember that you also have to keep the learners attentive throughout the entire lesson. You can maintain attention by using different media, leading lively discussions, asking questions, providing different learning activities, etc.
Informing the Student of the Learning Outcome
Help students focus their efforts in this event. You can do this with simple statements or thought-provoking questions. If possible, also make the students feel that they need to learn the knowledge and skills.
You can let the learner know about the learning outcome in an introduction or overview. This can be a good use for video, since some students skim over text as they find it boring.
Stimulating Recall of Prerequisites
Prepare students for what is to come in this event. One strategy you can use is simply stating the needed prerequisite skills. Alternatively, pre-tests can remind learners of the prerequisites and also help to determine a student’s current skill level. You should advise students who do not have the prerequisite skills to learn the skills before continuing. Stimulating recall of prerequisites should be done before major learning occurs. This is often done in an introduction or overview.
The learner analysis should have previously determined the relevant knowledge and experiences that typical students will bring into the learning situation.
Presenting the Material
When presenting material to the students in this event, in general, you should sequence the material in increasing difficulty and in small incremental steps. This helps ensure success and increases learner confidence.
A variety of methods can inspire interest. No single approach can be used to teach all learning outcomes, but the activities you choose must effectively address the learning outcomes and different learning styles. As much as possible, the activities learners do online should match what will be done in the real world. Learning by doing is very powerful. As the Buddha said, “Teach you? I cannot teach you. Go, experience for yourself.”
Note
Use a variety of methods to teach.
Where appropriate, the instructional activities you create should include fun ways to learn. However, remember that some learning is simply hard work. Every instructional activity can have strengths and weaknesses, depending on the learning outcome being taught. Incorporating a variety of creative instructional approaches can help maintain student interest and motivation as well as ensure that each student occasionally has a match between their learning style and the teaching style. Many effective lessons include more than one type of instructional activity.
Note
Try to make learning fun.
Remember to provide examples that are meaningful, relevant, and realistic. Base some of the content on the potential for making mistakes. Get this information by asking subject-matter experts about typical mistakes students make after they are taught the content in the traditional way. If you only teach what is correct, the learner may never learn what can go wrong. For example, teaching what can go wrong is important in teaching physicians how to make an accurate diagnosis.
Note
Consider teaching both the correct material and what can go wrong.
Base the total amount of material presented in a lesson on the learners’ age and assumed attention span, the material’s complexity, the activities needed, and the time needed for all of the instructional events. A rough estimate of the proportional amount of effort needed to cover a learning outcome should be based on the learning outcome’s frequency, importance, and difficulty.
- Frequency—How often is the behaviour needed?
- Importance—How significant is the behaviour to job performance?
- Difficulty—How hard is the behaviour to master?
For each learning outcome, give a rating (e.g., a number out of five) for the frequency, importance, and difficulty and then add the total. Base the estimated amount of content (e.g., a percentage of the number of screens) proportionally for each learning outcome. Table \(\PageIndex{1}\) shows an example.
You can gain ideas for presenting the material through brainstorming with all team members, other instructors, resource personnel, and even target audience learners. You can also review existing materials for ideas. You should not be responsible for generating all of the creative ideas yourself. When thinking about ideas, remember that people are social. Collaboration and discussions can be powerful in enhancing learning and can easily be done through computers and the Internet. In groups, students can discuss, debate, and explore many things. Imagine how much can be learned if students discuss issues or explain concepts to each other. As Giambattista Vico said, “One only knows something if one can explain it”. Also through computers, it is possible to tap into real data or tools such as those used by scientists. Wouldn’t students enjoy learning about climate, for example, if they could use real data and models to predict the weather?
Table \(\PageIndex{1}\):
| Objective |
Frequency |
Importance |
Difficulty |
Total |
Percent |
| Number 1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
10% |
| Number 2 |
4 |
3 |
5 |
12 |
30% |
| Number 3 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
8 |
20% |
| Number 4 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
6 |
15% |
| Number 5 |
1 |
5 |
4 |
10 |
25% |
| Total |
|
|
|
40 |
100% |
Depending on the learning outcome, you may need to teach some of them or support them through computer-based resources when the more common online strategies will not suffice. Computer-based resources include drill and practice, tutorials, simulations, online labs, educational games, intelligent tutoring systems, and virtual reality. These are described in Chapter 22, Computer-Based Resources for Learning. Some drill and practice activities can be effectively provided within Learning Management Systems. However, depending on the learning domain, thinking level required, complexity of the problem presentation, and feedback that needs to be provided, some drill and practice activities will need to be created with specialized tools such as Macromedia Flash.
Providing Learning Guidance
In helping students to learn the material, you can provide ways to categorize materials, provide memory devices, and link new knowledge to previously learned knowledge. You can also emphasize differences between related skills. As an example, you might explain that adding two digit numbers is similar to adding single digit numbers, except that a value may have to be “carried”. You can also provide students with strategies for recalling information and encourage them to create their own memory recall techniques. Providing guidance is particularly important because many students have not learned how to learn effectively.
Remember that learning is minimal if you simply provide information. As Paulo Freire said, “To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge”.
This event is usually integrated with “presenting the material”.
Eliciting the Performance
Learners must know how well they are progressing. You can do this by asking questions or providing opportunities to practise the skill being taught and then giving feedback. This event is also usually integrated with “presenting the material”.
It is better to provide a little bit of practice often as compared to a lot of practice given seldom. Allow for practice as learners logically need it after each concept of a lesson has been presented, rather than at a fixed interval such as at the end of each lesson after many concepts have been presented. This is even more important when learners need to practise sub-skills before proceeding to higher-level skills. In other words, help learners learn the material as the content is taught. Learning effectiveness can be compromised if you wait too long.
Make the difficulty level of the practice proportional to the difficulty of the task. Practice should not be so easy that it is trivial nor so difficult that it is frustrating. Remember to also check whether the learner makes expected mistakes.
Metacognition is an important step in eliciting the performance. Metacognition can be defined as your knowledge and understanding about your own mental processes, as well as how you actively control and monitor your memory, comprehension, and other thinking processes involved in planning to learn, learning, and assessing your learning. In simple terms, metacognition is a self-questioning strategy that entails “thinking about thinking”.
To address metacognition, learners can be prompted to answer questions such as:
- “How do I learn best?”
- Answers to this question relate to the individual’s learning style. For example, the learner may study best in a quiet area.
- “How does the nature of the task affect my decisions regarding learning the material?”
- The learner needs to think about issues such as the difficulty of the task. This can impact the time needed for learning the material.
- The type of task is also a factor. A common situation is that learning material needed for answering multiple-choice questions is different from studying for long-answer questions.
- “Do I have the time needed to do the task?”
- “For this type of task, what strategies work best for me?”
- “Am I motivated to do the task? If not, what needs to change?”
- “What related skills do I already know how to do or need to learn?”
- “How do I know that I have learned the concept?”
- “What did I learn from making that error?”
- “How well am I progressing?”
- “What do I still need to learn?”
- “How well is my plan and learning strategy working?”
- “Should I change my plan and learning strategy?”
- “What could I have done differently?”
- “What should I have done differently?”
- “How can the mental processes I used work for learning other content?”
Providing Feedback
Your feedback should be positive, constructive, and immediate. It should provide complete information as to why their answer and other possibilities are right or wrong, and/or guide students towards attaining the learning outcome. Detailed feedback is important to ensure understanding, especially if the learner’s answer was simply a guess or if the learner’s answer was correct but the reasoning was wrong. This event is coordinated with eliciting the performance.
Assessing Performance
Students are tested in this event. This step is basically more formal than the “elicit the performance” event. As much as possible, the tests you create should approximate real situations. Test all learning outcomes and only the learning outcomes. Tests should be criterion-referenced (that is, performance based on achieving the specified learning outcomes).
You should provide the students with their test results as soon as possible. The feedback you provide should pinpoint areas in which the student had difficulties.
Enhancing Retention and Transfer
In this event, ensure students retain the information and that the information can be transferred beyond the specific ideas presented in the lesson. More exposure leads to more retention. You can increase retention through questioning, giving reviews, paraphrasing, and providing summaries. Retention activities should occur at spaced intervals and occur before more complex skills are learned.
Note
Increase retention by exposing the learner to the material in a variety of ways.
You can facilitate transfer by providing links to related situations, related information, or novel problems and solutions. If possible, transfer should focus on real-world situations.
