Before any "instruction" can happen, first you must 1. Decide on outcomes, 2. Decide on performance objectives (ie measurable assessments), 3. Decide on curriculum sequencing. And then you begin diving into designing your actual instruction.
There are virtually no limits on what may or what may not be classified as instruction which is kind of crazy. But essentially instruction boils down to one thing: "COMMUNICATION". IE helping the student move "from one state of mind to another". When you realize that communication can happen almost anywhere, anytime, and in any random, you realize that instructional design has a very broad subject matter indeed. I mean, by this criteria going grocery shopping can be an instructional experience as you learn the average prices of the various goods. Importantly, good communication doesn't necessarily involve a large number of words. In fact in many instances irrelevant speech may detract from learning.
Now to discuss Gagne's view of "instruction".
In Gagne's mind, there exists in the human brain an essentially linear set of processes which for him constitutes learning. IE the information processing model. In short 1) the learner is exposed to some sensory input, 2) Some of this information ends up in short term memory (working memory) where it can be rehearsed and recombined with other bits of information, 3) Some of this ends up in long term memory once it has been sufficiently encoded and supported with linking schema, 4) When so desired this information is pulled out of long term memory and put in short term memory where it can be processed 5) A "response generator" inside the brain takes this information floating around in short term memory and makes the appropriate response, 6) Finally some sort of behavior is manifested. In Gagne's view, if any of these processes are short circuited or cut off prematurely, real learning cannot occur.
Therefore the whole question for Gagne becomes how to ensure that none of these crucial brain processes is ignored when designing instruction. He proposes "9 events of instruction" which an instructor can explicitly bear in mind when designing an instructional experience that will go a long way towards ensuring none of these important steps are missed. Although I'm not sure I agree with this whole premise, I see a fair amount of value in using these "9 events" to guide instruction design.
1. GAIN THE STUDENT'S ATTENTION!!! Did I get yours? This may go without saying but if the learner is not attending to the words you are saying or the actions you are performing then learning cannot occur. It is important that the attention-grabber be somewhat related to what you are going to teach or else the student will soon realize he's been bamboozled and check out. Thus witness the only temporary benefit that gummy bears will give to unmotivated 5th graders.
2. Inform the learner of the objective. This allows the student to filter down the torrent of incoming stimuli and only focus on aspects that will be relevant to the objective at hand. I was particularly intrigued by Gagne's reference to "goal schemas", which as I gathered, refers to the process of making hierarchies of skills and sub-skills explicit in learners minds so they know how to situate the current instruction in context of the ultimate objective. As a lifelong nerd, this makes me think of games like Diablo 2 where there is an explicit skill tree from the very start of the game. You can see the uber-powerful strike of death awaiting you at level 20 if only you gain the prerequisite skills by that time - but it's a long process.
3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learned capabilities. The sad fact exists that all learners except the self motivated usually won't subject themselves to the inconvenience of having to remember and relate the current information to old information they already have. It's just a lot of work. From what I've read about schema theory (not talked about in this paper) though, this process of relating bits of information to other bits of information is the only way that learning can be permanent. If the student is putting the new information in its own isolated silo in the brain, that information will be effectively useless. Given this, the instructor must help the student begin to remember connected pieces of information so that they can begin forming this dense schema.
4. Presenting the stimulus material. IE the situations or visuals that you would hope the learner would respond to differently by the end of your instruction. These stimuli are preferably specific rather than vague. In order to create as wide a range of response-provoking stimuli as possible, Gagne also discusses the importance using a "variety of examples". After having seen the stimuli in its various different guises the learner is better able to recognize the core of the stimuli that should evoke the appropriate response.
5. Provide scaffolding to allow the learner to make the appropriate logical connections in his own mind. Instructors can only produce a climate conducive to the formation of these logical connections. They cannot force them to occur. Building a nice scaffolding to help the learner jump from one logical place to the next logical place without being explicitly told where to go is one way in which this conducive environment can be developed. Gagne, however, is vague on the ideal degree of heavy handedness in this scaffolding process. As a rule of thumb however, he suggests encouraging more advanced learners to take increasingly large logical leaps while novices should be provided with fairly step by step guidance. There are also other rules of thumb with regards to different learner characteristics (curious vs practical) and learning domains (creative writing vs vocabulary building).
6. Elicit the performance. Using the same stimuli you used to teach the learner, provide the learner with an opportunity to make the connection all the way from stimulus to correct responses - without pointing out any of the intervening steps for him.
7. Provide feedback. If the student responded appropriately to the stimulus, give him two hearty pats on the back (figuratively), whereas if the student responded incorrectly, he needs to be informed of the discrepancy and perhaps be provided with additional instruction. Depending on the domain the nature of this feedback may vary considerably, from verbal to non-verbal, explicit or tacit, and so on. This step of the process is crucial if correct stimulus-response patterns are to be built up in memory. It reminds me of the immortal saying I once heard and have treasured from my 7th grade wrestling coach, "Only perfect practice makes perfect."
8. Assessing performance. As well as I could tell, this step seems to primarily refer to analyzing the validity and reliability of your assessment mechanisms. A good instructor wants to be sure there are no large gaps in the students knowledge and that the stimulus-response encoding will be robust to a wide variety of appropriate cues. Reliability increases as n increases, while validity increases to the extent the instructor believes the assessment mechanism accurately captures an authentic stimulus response opportunity.
9. Enhancing retention and transfer. To me, this stage essentially comes down to the concept of "fluency building". It's one thing to know a concept and be able to spit out a correct answer after several hours of laborious though, but it's an entirely different thing to get the stimulus-response pattern encoded so completely in your brain that it takes only seconds to produce the correct response. This comes down to lots and lots and lots of practice in a wide variety of relevant situations. For example, a typical learner "knows" his times tables far before he is able to answer them in an appropriate amount of time.
So this is Gagne in a nutshell. Interesting points, it seems fairly valid to me. I'm skeptical of his framework as the gospel truth but its hard for me to imagine any sort of effective instruction that doesn't include most or all of these instructional events. Going down this list explicitly as an instructional designer is probably a good place to begin when designing. I have few reservations - now I only need complete events 6 through 9 with regards to learning the concept! :)
For my related article I selected Mary Driscoll's highly cited summary of Gagne's complete instructional approach in Psychology of Learning for Instruction (pdf here). It provides a context for Gagne's approach that you don't get in this piece, providing a good complement.
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