In their essay Instructional Strategies for the Future, Brenda Bannan, Nada Dabbagh, J. J. Walcutt describe the limits of traditional instructional methods, and then present instructional requirements, instructional techniques, and strategies for meaningful learning that we should be using today to accelerate learning in schools.
Traditionally, we have deployed instructional methods, designed to make instruction more efficient. The big switch is to deploy learning strategies, where learners experience diverse learning activities, media, and contexts, many of which fall outside of what the instructor or instructional designer can control or even foresee. Learning outcomes are increasingly self-directed. Technology is often the bridge that connects learning events to each other, and learning occurs as the collective sum of the variety of learning events and experiences.
Ideally, instructional strategies and learning strategies work together, as the instructional strategies used by the teacher might amplify the learning strategies (for example, memorization, reading, research, listening) deployed by the learner.
Requirements for Modern Instruction
Diversity and interconnectivity: allow for diverse learners (goals, methods, interests, abilities, resources) and connect experiences of an individual and across individuals.
Enable additional resources and activities, and connect them as part of learning experiences; it’s not just the activities that the instructors control and view, it’s connecting all of the other things that learners are doing to the learning and connecting the learning to all of the other things that learners are doing.
Help learners extrapolate meaning across otherwise unconnected activities. For example, learning basic math operations is one level, applying them to daily life, higher level math, or to scientific principles are at higher levels; the more connections and the more connections to learners’ interests, the deeper the learning. This adds value to activities and learning by facilitating multiple frames of reference for activities and the psychomotor, cognitive, and affective learning.
Manage cognitive overload; help learners filter out the “noise”, focus on do-able challenges, and to help learners with techniques to self-manage and self-regulate.
Develop techniques for learners to create their own connections, for example instead of memorizing a banana bread recipe, how to find recipes and how to seek assistance when they need it. While these strategies must come from the learners, teachers and coaches and encourage and help the learners enhance these capabilities.
Learn how to curate and retrieve resources and knowledge. Taking notes is certainly one traditional technique, but with so many resources available, learners can use skills to organize for quick and timely access.
Blend instructor led with learner led activities, which combine expert-directed learning controls and learner-directed interventions.
Instructional Techniques for Meaningful Learning
Scaffolding: providing support for those who need it and increased freedom and challenges for those who are capably independent. This facilitates activities in the zone of proximal development for diverse learners. Scaffolding can also be deployed as I do, we do, you do or as an introduction to problem-based, project-based, and query-based learning.
Modeling and explaining: demonstrating a process while sharing insights. This is especially effective for psychomotor learning , training, as a show and tell introduction to an activity.
Coaching and mentoring: observing learner performance and offering suggestion to bring it more in line with how an expert performance to reach those same goals. Coaching and mentoring can also be thought of as a type of scaffolding that nudges the learner toward mastery.
Strategies for Meaningful Learning
Cooperative (collaborative, conversational): opportunities to collaborate between learners, with learners and outsiders, and with learners and instructors or instructional systems.
Authentic (complex, contextualized): engage learners in complex tasks that achieve results the learner cares about
Constructive (articulate, reflective): challenging learners to create and perform beyond their comfort zones, and especially where they can tap into and obtain feedback from experts’ performance and practice.
Intentional (goal-directed, regulatory): encouraging leaners to set goals, analyze their actions, and compare their actions to others while keeping their goals and intentions in the forefront.
Active (manipulative, observant), engaging learners in hands-on active learning, learning by doing and getting their own feedback by observing the consequences and results of their actions.
While learning activities that are cooperative, authentic constructive,intentional, and active have always been great ways to learn, they are even more critical in situations where the instructor or teacher cannot be in front of students every day.
If you are reading this before August 25, 2020, you might want to attend a related free webinar by Serious Play Conference featured speaker John Findlay, A Fireside Chat on Creating Effective Remote Learning Experiences. If it’s after that date, catch the webinar on the Edchat Interactive Archives.