The age of instructional design - a focus on content

The main topic of the research during this period, starting from the ‘50s
was related to what content should be taught by using technology and how it
should be organized.The performance criterion was related to teacher performance. In other words, an educational technology is effective if  it can be used to teach the
same contents with the same learning outcomes as teachers do. 
Robert Gagné had an important contribution, by this time to the
instructional design research, stating that knowledge acquisition could be
facilitated by hierarchical sequencing of instruction, from subordinated knowledge
to more complex abilities (Gagné, 1962; White & Gagné, 1978). The main idea of
this theory was that former learning of some prerequisite knowledge facilitates
later acquisition of higher-order skills, but this doesn’t happen when the
prerequisites are learned out of the learning sequences (Gagné, 1962; White &
Gagné, 1978). Also, Gagné (1968) proposed a descriptive theory of the instructive
strategy that includes nine events, which, in his opinion, are critical for an efficient
instruction. The sequence of events are: (1) gaining attention, (2) informing the
learner about the objective, (3) stimulating recall of prerequisite learning, (4)
presenting the stimulus material, (5) providing learning guidance, (6) eliciting the
performance, (7) providing feedback about performance correctness, 8) assessing
performance, (9) enhancing retention and transfer
.
Capitalizing on these ideas, educational technologies have tried to create
tools aiming to maximize learning outcomes of the students. Gagné and Briggs
(1979) provided prescriptions for each of these instructional events, based on the
type of learning - intellectual abilities, cognitive strategy, verbal information,
attitudes, motor abilities (according to the descriptive theory of knowledge,
elaborated by Gagné) - combining them in a matrix with five different models of
instruction. The work of the two authors had at least two major consequences for
the instructional designers (Reigeluth & Curtis, 1987):
  
TO BE CONTINUE .......

Source : Cogniţie, Creier, Comportament / Cognition, Brain, Behavior
Romanian Association for Cognitive Science. 
Volume XI, No. 1 (March), 115 - 129