Applications of First Principles of Instruction Based on Workshop Activity

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently gave a presentation on how to teach like an award-winning instructor. Award-winning instructors tend to apply First Principles of Instruction in their teaching. During this presentation, I asked participants to generate ideas for applying these principles, and below are some of their ideas. There are some good ideas, here! For more detail on these principles, you might review this page. Note that the examples below focus on the 4 phases of instruction but do not focus on the problem-centered principle.

Activation Examples:

• Brain Writing – idea in center of paper and pass around
• Free Writing
• Previous Assignment is ticket to enter class
• Muddiest point
• Ask what you know of topic – what have you done before
• List – group – label
• Polling
• Placing a dot near know subjects
• Personal experience about something in your life as it relates to literature.
• Apply real world knowledge.
• Stimulate how subjects relate to their real life.

Demonstration Examples:

• YouTube clips – example: Super Size me in 7 minutes
• Polling – phones
• Jeopardy game template
• Students and teacher write a lesson plan together
• Design an activity that demonstrates what is to be learned
• Graphic organizers to demonstrate what is to be learned
• Give a concept and then give a real example
• Give a live demonstration
• Explain a real world concept
• Demonstration - uses YouTube

Application Examples:

• Use a project working on in real life
• Two -minute papers
• Quick quiz
• Have students analyze information
• Students apply real world concepts
• Problem solving
• They put their ideas down on chart. Paper or in a word document and share it on a smart board
• They use the information when they write their lesson plans

Integration Examples:

• Field experiences
• Create own solar cells –  make models
• Create project plans or case studies
• Students' application of real information
• Role-playing exercises
• Real world situation where students apply information?

How to Teach Like an Award-winning Instructor

What do highly-recognized instructors do? In this blog post, I will point you to some resources that outline how several excellent, award-wining faculty members at a large university use research-based strategies for effective instruction.

First Principles of Instruction

Initially, I set out to discover how well these teachers utilize known principles of instruction. I found that they were definitely using these strategies, and they also possessed characteristics and traits that really helped facilitate student learning and move them forward in their learning.

Read The Research Article Here

I also recently gave a presentation on some of these findings at the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Conference and have shared my slides below.

How to Teach Like an Award-winning Instructor from Joel Gardner

Tell, Show, Do, Apply: The Anatomy of Good Instruction

This article was originally posted at elearningindustry.com. 

There are a lot of opinions about how to design quality instruction. New technologies, theories, and processes are continually created and touted as the next greatest thing for instructional designers. And while these new technologies can be powerful, there are a few key instructional strategies that must be implemented to maximize learning effectiveness. 

 These principles have consistently been shown to increase learning and engagement, but often instructional designers become enamored by the new technologies and fail to implement these strategies effectively. In this post, we will describe these strategies and show how you can use them effectively in your design.

 We can categorize all instructional activities into two basic categories:

1. Stuff that the Instruction or Instructor does, and
2. Stuff that the Learner does. Within these categories there are four basic strategies for creating excellent instruction: tell, show, do, and apply.

The Four Basic Strategies for Creating Excellent Instruction

1. Tell
   The first component of good instruction is the Tell strategy. This is the strategy used to provide the learner with key information related to their learning. Facts, concepts, rules, and procedures can all be conveyed using the Tell strategy. For example, if you were designing instruction to teach customer service representatives how to offer a new product to their existing customers, you would tell them the specific steps they would go through to offer the product and even show a visual outline of the steps.
2. Show
   The second component of good instruction is the Show strategy. This is the strategy used to demonstrate examples of what you want to teach. In the customer service example, you would show a variety of real examples of an agent offering the product to the learner. You would probably show "non-examples" as well- examples of what not to do when offering the products. These examples will help the learner see how the information you told them is applied.
3. Do
   After providing a variety of examples, you should provide your learners with the opportunity to Do what you have taught them. In the customer service example, the learners take several calls with actual customers and offer them the product. Trainers and managers listen in on these calls and provide the learners with feedback and guidance. It is important that learners be given plenty of feedback as they apply what they have learned so that they can improve their skills and abilities. As in this example, the is application of the new knowledge should replicate the real-world environment as much as possible to make the learning experience authentic and engaging.
4. Apply
   The final component is Apply. In this step, learners plan out how they will apply their knowledge in their own environments. In the customer service example, the learners plan out their own personalized scripts for specific situations and set goals for offering and selling products to their clients.

These basic strategies align with several known theories of instruction. For example, they support Merrill's First Principles of Instruction, a well-known theory of instruction that is based on extensive research. Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction also align well with these strategies.

The next time you design a piece of instruction, ask yourself how well you are using these strategies. If you will conscientiously apply them, you will find increased student learning and instructional design effectiveness.

Article: A Conceptual Framework for Organizing Active Learning Experiences in Biology Instruction

In the world of teaching and learning, many people talk about "active learning." However, this is something that seems to have been poorly defined, in the past. To help clarify what active learning actually is, my colleague Dr. Brian Belland and I recently published an article entitled A conceptual framework for organizing active learning experiences in biology instruction.In this article, we outline what we identify as some of the major themes of active learning, particularly in higher education biology courses. The active learning themes we identified include (1) Problem-solving, (2) Collaboration and Discussion, (3) Animations, and (4) Technology-enhanced Activities.

Active Learning Themes in Biology Instruction.

In the article, we describe these four themes and show how Merrill's First Principles of Instruction can be used as a framework for organizing them. To access the article, click here.


Reference:

Gardner, J., Belland, B., (2011). A conceptual framework for organizing active learning experiences in biology instruction. Journal of Science Education and Technology. Accessed online at http://www.springerlink.com/content/90t3706373j2u190/. DOI: 10.1007/s10956-011-9338-8.

Macro, Micro, and Finishing Principles of Instruction

I have been thinking about the principles I use when designing instruction. I believe that there are three major categories that can and should be used to create effective, efficient, engaging instruction. These are:

1. Macro Principles - these are the principles that frame the structure and sequencing of the instruction. I typically use Merrill's First Principles of Instruction as my macro principles when designing courses or elearning.
2. Micro Principles - these are the principles that enhance the effectiveness and delivery of the macro principles. They can include principles of message design or multimedia principles and ultimately make the macro principles more effective. 
3. Finishing Principles - these are the principles that make the learning experience smoother and more enjoyable. For example, they might include visual design and usability design. These principles make for a more pleasing learning experience.

House Analogy
I might compare these principles to the construction of a house. (This analogy probably doesn't hold up perfectly, but hopefully it illustrates the point). The Macro Principles are the structure of the house - they provide the foundation and the framework and ensure that the house is built in a way that will function effectively. The Micro Principles make the house functional and include those features that make the home inhabitable. The Finishing Principles make the home pleasing to live in.

	Macro principles	Micro principles	Finishing Principles
Instructional Design	First Principles of Instruction	Message design Multimedia principles	Visual design Usability design
House Analogy	Foundation, framework,	Plumbing, wiring, walls, doors, windows	Finish work, paint, decoration

The interesting thing is that a good instructional designer often has each of these kinds of principles in mind simultaneously throughout the design process. The macro principles might be the first thing that are made explicit, but for an effective product to be realized, the designer sees the whole picture, the complete house, from the beginning.

What do you think? Does this approach match how you design instruction? Or do you use a different strategy?

What is a "Principle of Instruction?"

In the world of instructional design, we often talk about principles of instruction, (sometimes called principles of instructional design) but it can be difficult to clearly explain what these principles are and how they can be used effectively. In this post I will share some ideas on what they are and how they can and should be used.

Defining Instructional Principles
Let's start by defining each word individually. "Instructional" is related to instruction, which an online dictionary defines as "the practice of instructing... imparting knowledge." This same online dictionary defines a principle as "A rule or law concerning the functioning of natural phenomena or mechanical processes." Merrill (2002) defines a principle as "a relationship that is true under appropriate conditions regardless of program or practice" (p. 43).

If-Then
The above definitions can be somewhat confusing, so one easy way to look at principles is to think of them as If-Then statements which describe an underlying law or rule that governs how the natural world functions. In an instructional setting, this means that there are natural laws or rules of learning that can be utilized to facilitate and increase learning. We use these natural laws by employing instructional strategies based on the natural principle. When we apply principles to an instructional setting, we can use the following line of thinking:

If the conditions are X, and you do Y (Y = an instructional strategy that is based on a known instructional principle), Then Z will be more likely occur (Z = the specific outcome).


Here is an example:

If your goal is to have learners learn how to perform a complex cognitive task (X, conditions), and you provide them with real-world "worked" examples of that task being accomplished (Y, instructional strategy based on demonstration principle of instruction), then the learners will be able to solve the complex cognitive task sooner and more effectively than if you didn't provide the examples (Z, outcome).

Instructional principles are probabilistic
It should be noted that these principles are probabilistic in nature, which means that using these principles will make it more likely that student learning will increase. There are many other factors such as student attention and motivation that heavily influence student learning.

Who creates instructional principles?
Instructional principles describe an underlying law or rule that governs how we learn, so technically they are discovered instead of invented. Often these principles are identified through research done at universities. These principles can also be discovered through the practical experience of conscientious instructional designers. No matter where they are discovered, the application of a true principle will always increase student learning if used appropriately.

What are some fundamental principles of instruction?
So, what are some known principles of instruction? Perhaps the most comprehensive compilation of fundamental instructional principles is Merrill's First Principles of Instruction. You can learn more about these principles by accessing the documents below:

• Applying Merrill's First Principles of Instruction (an article I published a few years ago - provides basic instructions on how to use the principles effectively)
• First Principles of Instruction (Dr. Merrill's original publication - describes how the principles were discovered)
• How Award Wining Instructors Use Merrill's First Principles of Instruction (another article that demonstrates how these principles can be used effectively)
• Dr. Merrill's published papers on First Principles (A Web page with many outstanding articles and resources)

Instructional principles are absolutely vital because they help new instructional designers avoid common errors by applying known strategies to their work. Knowing and applying these (and other) principles will inevitably produce more efficient, effective, and engaging learning experiences for our learners.