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The first step in any instruction design (or indeed, any technical writing) task is to understand not simply your topic, but also your audience.
Who are my learners?
What are their needs?
Are there educational theories and assessment methods that are uniquely suited to support their learning?
Instead of the sage on the stage approach, I prefer educational theories and methods that recognize the unique life experiences my students bring into the classroom and how I can connect new-to-them information literacy skills to the skills they already use in their daily lives.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.
Many of the major learning theories in this vein–constructivism, cognitivism, behaviorism, connectivism, and humanism–use similar techniques. For example, cognitivists and behaviorists both employ active participation in their curriculum. The difference lies not in the activity itself, but rather the educational purpose underlying the activity.
Consequently, rather than aligning my curriculum with a single specific theory, I work to incorporate shared techniques such as active learning (behaviorism and cognitivism), metacognition (cognitivism, constructivism, and humanism), and the concept of assessing readiness to learn (employed by each major theory to some degree) into my own approach. To this basic foundation, I intentionally look for opportunities to employ specific techniques such as scaffolding to support English language learners, socratic questioning, culturally-responsive pedagogy, universal design, and inclusive assessment methodologies.
References
You can find a list of the resources that inform this philosophy on the References page.
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