Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

20 – Instructional Strategies
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 metacognition
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.
Glossary
ARCS. Refers to the attributes Attention, Relevance,
Confidence, and Satisfaction. The ARCS model promotes
student motivation.
Attitudes. Tendencies people have to making particular
decisions or choices under specific circumstances.
Cluster analysis. Used to organize verbal information
into logical groupings that are small enough to be
learned successfully.
Discovery learning. A method of teaching where
learners learn information, such as a concept, that has
not been directly stated. For example, by allowing learners
to change one of two related variables and see the
consequence on the other, learners can discover the
relationship on their own.
Feedback. Any message or display that you give to a
learner based on his or her input.
Hierarchical analysis. Used to determine the subordinate
skills required to learn each intellectual skill.
Instructional events. Events that ensure that learning
occurs. These events include gaining attention, informing
the learner of the learning outcome, stimulating
recall of prerequisites, presenting the material, providing
learning guidance, eliciting the performance, providing
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