eJournal Week 5

Identifying Instructional Strategies

The steps in the instructional design process covered up to this point have been deciding what you are going to teach; the purpose of this assignment is to determine how you are going to teach the instruction. An instructional strategy refers to sequencing and organizing content, determining learning activities, and the content delivery system. A good instructional strategy takes into account what is known about facilitating learning via research in educational psychology—what theory or theories should you apply? However, in designing your instructional strategy, you have to go beyond naming the theory or methodology. At a minimum, you also need to identify the following three major components that when part of an instructional strategy will facilitate learning:

1) motivation: how will you engage and motivate your learners to learn?

2) prerequisite and subskills: what is that they will learn and in what order?

3) practice and feedback: how will you know that they have learned it? and how will you let learners know whether they’ve learned?

In your journal this week, solidify your instructional goals and think through what theories or methods you’ll draw upon to help learners attain them. Then begin formulating your instructional strategies. 

The strategy that best works with this course is going to be the hearing/question/thinking technique. Rhythm has to become a part of the person learning it. It’s this reason that just seeing a technique will not suffice, the best way to learn is to hear it. There is a great lesson where students work in groups and listen to the excerpt and then discuss what they think it is.

The motivation will be difficult at first. The best way to attain this is to introduce things student already know. Music they’ve heard on the radio has rhythms that can be pulled and used to connect to lessons. This is the only prerequisite needed. To have listed to some form of music at some time in their lives. When they can recite the rhythms without teacher prompting, the lesson will be deemed successful.