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Robert Gagné's nine events of instruction, designed to address the mental conditions for learning, are a valuable framework for creating engaging and meaningful instruction. By combining Gagné's events with Bloom's Revised Taxonomy, you can design effective instructional methods. The steps outlined below offer sample methods to implement these events in your own teaching.
Ensure the learners are ready to learn and participate in activities by presenting a stimulus to capture their attention.
Stimulate with novelty, uncertainty, and surprise in stories, cases, roles, or scenarios
Pose thought-provoking questions
Have students pose questions to be answered by other students
Lead an ice breaker activity
Discuss current issues or reflect on “the news today”
Record a life experience
Appeal to mental or emotional senses and imagery
2. Inform students
Inform students of the objectives or outcomes for the course and individual lessons to help them understand what they are expected to learn and do. Provide objectives before instruction begins.
Describe required performance and its standard criteria
Inform students of the objectives or outcomes for the course and individual lessons to help them understand what they are expected to learn and do.
3. Stimulate prior learning
Help students make sense of new information by relating it to something they already know or something they have already experienced.
Ask questions about previous experiences
Ask students about their understanding of previous concepts
Relate previous course information to the current topic
Have students incorporate prior learning into current activities, such as:
Creating a world cloud
Facilitating 1:1 Conversation-Discussions
One minute write ups
Seek examples (connection to Jesuit “experience”)
Cases
Relateables - current technology, evolution of the product
Revisit prior content
“Anticipation guide” - agreement/survey/etc
Pretest
Recall enduring knowledge
Provide alternates or context for the students
Make instructional adjustments
4. Present the content
Use strategies to present and cue lesson content to provide more effective instruction. Organize and group content in meaningful ways, and provide explanations after demonstrations.
Present multiple versions of the same content (e.g. video, demonstration, lecture, podcast, group work, etc.)
Use a variety of media to engage students in learning
Incorporate active learning strategies to keep students involved
Provide access to content on Canvas so students can access it outside of class
Other examples include, but are not limited to:
Website (existing)
Textbook
Video/Audio
Media selection
Library
Journal articles
PPT/Prezi
Polling
Discussion content
Case(s)
Expert Account
Guest Speaker
Live data
Infographics
Current events
Storytelling
Observations
Students Presenting
5. Provide learning guidance
Advise students of strategies to aid them in learning content and of resources available. In other words, help students learn how to learn.
Provide instructional support as needed – i.e. scaffolding that can be removed slowly as the student learns and masters the task or content
Model varied learning strategies – e.g. mnemonics, concept mapping, role playing, visualizing
Use examples and non-examples – examples help students see what to do, while non-examples help students see what not to do
Provide case studies, visual images, analogies, and metaphors – Case studies provide real world application, visual images assist in making visual associations, and analogies and metaphors use familiar content to help students connect with new concepts
Help students learn how to learn!
6. Elicit performance (practice)
Have students apply what they have learned to reinforce new skills and knowledge and to confirm correct understanding of course concepts.
Facilitate student activities – e.g. ask deep-learning questions, have students collaborate with their peers, facilitate practical laboratory exercises
Provide formative assessment opportunities – e.g. written assignments, individual or group projects, presentations
Design effective quizzes and tests – i.e. test students in ways that allow them to demonstrate their comprehension and application of course concepts (as opposed to simply memorization and recall)
7. Provide feedback
Provide timely feedback of students’ performance to assess and facilitate learning and to allow students to identify gaps in understanding before it is too late.
Confirmatory feedback informs the student that they did what they were supposed to do. This type of feedback does not tell the student what she needs to improve, but it encourages the learner.
Evaluative feedback apprises the student of the accuracy of their performance or response but does not provide guidance on how to progress.
Remedial feedback directs students to find the correct answer but does not provide the correct answer.
Descriptive or analytic feedback provides the student with suggestions, directives, and information to help them improve their performance.
Peer-evaluation and self-evaluation help learners identify learning gaps and performance shortcomings in their own and peers’ work.
Provide timely feedback of students’ performance to assess and facilitate learning and to allow students to identify gaps in understanding…
8. Assess performance
Test whether the expected learning outcomes have been achieved on previously stated course objectives.
Administer pre- and post-tests to check for progression of competency in content or skills
Embed formative assessment opportunities throughout instruction using oral questioning, short active learning activities, or quizzes
Implement a variety of assessment methods to provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency
Craft objective, effective rubrics to assess written assignments, projects, or presentations
Implement a variety of assessment methods to provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency.
9. Enhance retention and transfer
Help learners retain more information by providing them opportunities to connect course concepts to potential real-world applications.
Avoid isolating course content. Associate course concepts with prior (and future) concepts and build upon prior (and preview future) learning to reinforce connections.
Continually incorporate questions from previous tests in subsequent examinations to reinforce course information.
Have students convert information learned in one format into another format (e.g. verbal or visuospatial). For instance, requiring students to create a concept map to represent connections between ideas (Halpern & Hakel, 2003, p. 39).
To promote deep learning, clearly articulate your lesson goals, use your specific goals to guide your instructional design, and align learning activities to lesson goals (Halpern & Hakel, 2003, p. 41).
Summary
Ideally, you should prepare course goals and learning objectives before implementing the nine events
The goals and objectives will help situate the events in their proper context. The nine events of instruction can then be modified to fit both the content and students’ level of knowledge.