Website Design Tour

Instructional Design

This website and music technology curriculum identifies the mental conditions for learning with a systematic approach to instructional design and training.   It uses the following design models in identifying the outcomes of the instruction, guiding and developing the instructional content (scope and sequence) and establishing how instructional effectiveness will be evaluated:

Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction

Gagne created a nine-step process called the events of instruction, which correlate to and address the conditions of learning.  The figure below shows these instructional events in the left column and the associated mental processes in the right column.

Instructional Event                                         Internal Mental Process

1.  Gain Attention                                             Stimuli activates receptors

2.  Inform learners of objectives                        Creates level of expectation for                                                                                           learning

3.  Stimulate recall of prior learning                   Retrieval and activation of        
                                                                       short-term memory     

4.  Present the content                                      Selective perception of content.

5.  Provide "learning guidance"                          Semantic encoding for storage                                                                                           of long-term memory

6.  Elicit performance (practice)                         Responds to questions to enhance                                                                                        encoding and verification 

7.  Provide feedback                                         Reinforcement and assessment                                                                                            of correct performance

8.  Assess performance                                     Retrieval and reinforcement of                                                                                           content as final evaluation

9.  Enhance retention and transfer to the job      Retrieval and generalization of                                                                                               learned skill to new situation                                    

David Ausubel

Conceived a major instructional mechanism called "Advance Organizers".
This method provides a means for students to organize the ideas to be presented by stating in advance what the lesson will focus on and how it will be structured. 

Lessons begin with clearly stated objectives and then by linking new knowledge to what was already known through examples, analogies and metaphors.

This is followed by periodic review questions and then a final summary, test or project.