An instructional strategy should describe the instructional materials’ components and the procedures used with the materials needed for students to achieve the learning outcomes. Your instructional strategy should be based on your instructional analysis, the learning outcomes, and other previous instructional design steps, or on how others have solved similar problems. At the end of this process, you should have a clear set of specifications describing how the material will be taught. You will use the instructional strategy as a framework for further developing the instructional materials or evaluating whether existing materials are suitable or need revision.
Consider strategies that go beyond basic teaching methods. Remember that you can address a variety of learning styles if you teach with a variety of different methods and media. No single teaching method or medium is perfect for all learners. As you proceed through developing an instructional strategy, start specifying the media that would most effectively teach the material.
Each learning domain classification is best taught with different instructional strategies.
When teaching verbal information:
- Organize the material into small easily retrievable chunks, based on the cluster analysis done earlier.
- Link new information to knowledge the learner already possesses.
- Use memory devices like forming images or using mnemonics for new information.
- Use meaningful contexts and relevant cues.
- Have the learners generate examples in their minds, do something with the information, or apply the knowledge to the real world.
- Avoid rote repetition as a memorization aid.
- Provide visuals to increase learning and recall.
When teaching intellectual skills:
- Base the instructional strategy and sequencing on the hierarchical analysis done earlier.
- Link new knowledge to previously learned knowledge.
- Use memory devices like forming images or mnemonics for new information.
- Use examples and non-examples that are familiar to the student.
- Use discovery-learning techniques.
- Use analogies that the learners know.
- Provide for practice and immediate feedback.
When teaching psychomotor skills:
- Base the instructional strategy on the procedural analysis done earlier.
- Provide directions for completing all of the steps.
- Provide repeated practice and feedback for individual steps, then groups of steps, and then the entire sequence.
- Remember that, in general, practice should become less dependent on written or verbal directions.
- Consider visuals to enhance learning.
- Consider job aids, such as a list of steps, to reduce memory requirements.
- Allow learners to interact with real objects or do the real thing.
When teaching attitudes:
- Base the instructional strategy on the instructional analysis done earlier.
- If you can, show a human model to which the students can easily relate.
- Show realistic consequences to appropriate and inappropriate choices.
- Consider using video.
- Remember that attitudes taught through computer technology might not transfer to the real world.
- Note that it can be difficult to test whether the attitudes taught have transferred to real situations.
Based on the subordinate skills analysis done earlier, sequence the learning outcomes from lower to higher-level skills, easy to hard, simple to complex, specific to general, concrete to abstract, and/or the known to the unknown.
It is important for your lessons to motivate learners because without motivation learning is unlikely to occur. Motivation can be enhanced through addressing these attributes: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS). Try to include all of the attributes since each alone may not maintain student motivation. You should build motivational strategies into the materials throughout the instructional design process.
The instructional events represent what should be done to ensure that learning occurs:
- To gain attention, involve and motivate the students. Do this throughout the lesson.
- Inform the student of the learning outcome, before major learning occurs, to help them focus their efforts.
- Stimulate recall of prerequisites by stating the needed prerequisite skills or giving a pre-test.
- When presenting the material, sequence the material in increasing difficulty and in small incremental steps. Use a variety of methods to maintain interest. Provide examples that are meaningful, relevant, and realistic. Base some of the content on the potential for making mistakes. The proportional amount of effort needed to cover a learning outcome should be based on the learning outcome’s frequency, importance, and difficulty.
- While presenting the material, provide learning guidance to help students learn the material.
- While presenting the material, elicit the performance so that learners can find out how well they are doing. Do this by asking questions or providing opportunities to practise the skill. Remember to address meta-cognition within this activity.
- When eliciting the performance, provide detailed feedback. Your feedback should be positive, constructive, and immediate. Your feedback should provide complete information as to why the answer and other answers are right or wrong or guide students in how to attain the stated learning outcome.
- Formally assess the students’ performance. Tests should approximate real situations. Test all learning outcomes and only the learning outcomes. Tests should be criterion-referenced.
- Enhance retention and transfer so that students retain the information and can transfer the information beyond the specific ideas presented in the lesson.
Each type of instructional activity has strengths and weaknesses depending on the problem being solved. 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, some fun ways to learn, and social activities like collaboration and discussions.
Based on the instructional activities for each learning outcome, and information from the other steps of the instructional design process, you need to determine whether materials should be gathered or developed. The main reason for using existing materials (those owned by your institution or purchased) is to save time and money.
The instructional strategy of the materials you develop should consider the learning domain, motivational techniques, each event of instruction, and all of the information gained through the systematic instructional design process. It is wise to create a paper-based version (storyboard) of what will appear on each screen that a student will see. Storyboards are easier to review and edit than content within a learning management system. Based on the storyboard, make final decisions about the media needed to effectively teach the material. After you develop the media, individual pieces can be incorporated into the learning management system. After this, you can begin the final formative evaluation.
