Dr. Wes Leggett Designing and Delivering Instruction

Designing and Delivering Instruction
Dr. Wes Leggett

Design and delivery of instruction is a major part of teaching. How you design and deliver your instruction will influence to a great degree your success as a teacher. It is of utmost importance that you develop within your students a desire to learn and encourage them to become active, lifelong learners. If you can do this, half the battle is won. A lot of classroom management problems can be avoided if your class is interesting, fun, and supportive of the learning process.

In designing your instruction you need to pay attention to the degree that your students are active, involved participants. You don't need to be running a mile a minute throughout the day, but neither should students be sitting passively, quietly listening to every word you say. Learning is at its greatest when students are actively participating in the learning process. Dale's Cone of Experience is a model used to describe the degree of learning that occurs with different levels of abstraction and active participation. The farther you progress down the Pyramid, the greater the learning. It has been found that we retain only 5% of what we hear but 70% of what we do. This should tell us something about teaching and learning.

Dale's Cone of Experience

Designing instruction follows a general pattern for most instruction.

Analysis

Initially, you need to Analyze your learners.

What do your students already know?
What do they need to know?
What would they like to know?
How does what the need and want to know relate to what they already know?
What are their ability levels like?
How do they learn best?
What accommodations do you need to make for special student needs?

Design

Many times we begin to create before we ever stop to Design what it is we are creating. All too often this is a big mistake. This error can be amplified many times when we are creating instruction. We need to stop and take a look at the learner's needs as well as our content needs. Consider:

How can the content best be taught?
How do my students learn best?
What must I teach? What would I like to teach? What is nice, but not necessary?
How can gain my student's attention so they will learn?

Robert Gagne defined Nine Events of Instruction in the early 1960's. They have since been adopted and modified by many different teachers, but the original Nine Events still hold true for many instructional situations

Attention

Gain the learner's attention. Make use of visuals, story telling, color, interest, relevance - whatever you can do as a teacher to gain the student's attention so that they will attend to the learning process.

Objectives

Inform the learner about what they will be learning and how that learning will be assessed. Don't keep your students guessing about what is important to you and to them as learners.

Remember

Spend some time with your students helping them remember what they already know. You need to guide them through the process of making connections between what they already know and what they are learning.

Presentation

Present the information to your students in a variety of methods. You do not always need to be the teacher standing up in front of the room dispensing knowledge. Methods you can use include reading, Web Quests, group projects, student presentations, lab activities - there are a variety of ways to deliver information.

Guided Practice

Provide your students with time to practice what they have learned. Use a process called scaffolding which is to provide a lot of support in the beginning and then gradually reduce and eventually remove the support. It is critical that they practice what they have learned while you are immediately available to help them correct their mistakes. When students learn things incorrectly and develop misconceptions, it is extremely difficult to help them unlearn the misconception.

Practice

Once your students have a handle on the concept or procedure, provide them with opportunities to practice what they have learned independently or in small groups. Remove yourself from the immediate vicinity and encourage your students to rely on themselves and each other to complete the task. This will help them retain the information better and build confidence in their own knowledge and abilities.

Feedback

Provide students with direct, explicit feedback regarding their performance. Use feedback as a means to facilitate the learning process. To do this, students need more information than just "good job." Tell them why it was a "good job." Make sure you tell students what they did right as well as what they need to improve or change..

Assessment

Assess what learning took place. Evaluate not only the student's performance, but your own performance as well. Did your students learn what you wanted them to learn? Did you teach what you needed to teach?

Transfer

Provide your students with an opportunity to transfer what they have learned to new concepts, content, or learning situations. So many times what we learn becomes stagnated. Help students transfer their knowledge from one learning instance to another or to the real world.

In summary, designing instruction involves the consideration of many factors. Pay particular attention to the types of learners you will be instructing and the levels of instructional activities and methods that can be utilized. It is important to understand that the design and development of instruction is an ongoing process requiring reflective evaluation followed by modifications that improve effectiveness and maintain currency and relevance.

Attention	Gain the learner's attention. Make use of visuals, story telling, color, interest, relevance - whatever you can do as a teacher to gain the student's attention so that they will attend to the learning process.
Objectives	Inform the learner about what they will be learning and how that learning will be assessed. Don't keep your students guessing about what is important to you and to them as learners.
Remember	Spend some time with your students helping them remember what they already know. You need to guide them through the process of making connections between what they already know and what they are learning.
Presentation	Present the information to your students in a variety of methods. You do not always need to be the teacher standing up in front of the room dispensing knowledge. Methods you can use include reading, Web Quests, group projects, student presentations, lab activities - there are a variety of ways to deliver information.
Guided Practice	Provide your students with time to practice what they have learned. Use a process called scaffolding which is to provide a lot of support in the beginning and then gradually reduce and eventually remove the support. It is critical that they practice what they have learned while you are immediately available to help them correct their mistakes. When students learn things incorrectly and develop misconceptions, it is extremely difficult to help them unlearn the misconception.
Practice	Once your students have a handle on the concept or procedure, provide them with opportunities to practice what they have learned independently or in small groups. Remove yourself from the immediate vicinity and encourage your students to rely on themselves and each other to complete the task. This will help them retain the information better and build confidence in their own knowledge and abilities.
Feedback	Provide students with direct, explicit feedback regarding their performance. Use feedback as a means to facilitate the learning process. To do this, students need more information than just "good job." Tell them why it was a "good job." Make sure you tell students what they did right as well as what they need to improve or change..
Assessment	Assess what learning took place. Evaluate not only the student's performance, but your own performance as well. Did your students learn what you wanted them to learn? Did you teach what you needed to teach?
Transfer	Provide your students with an opportunity to transfer what they have learned to new concepts, content, or learning situations. So many times what we learn becomes stagnated. Help students transfer their knowledge from one learning instance to another or to the real world.