ID 553 - Module 6: Creating Instruction: Planning and Designing the Intervention

Instructional Strategies: Gagne, Merrill, and Scaffolding

Estimated reading time: 35 minutes.

Video: Instructional Strategies: Gagne, Merrill, and Scaffolding. Lecture: mapping a real lesson onto Gagne's nine events, Merrill's principles as a strategy check, evidence-based practice design, scaffolding, sequencing, and media selection. (Instructor: build with make_videos.py or record and embed your own.)

What an instructional strategy is

An instructional strategy is the plan for how learners will get from their entry skills to the objectives: the sequence of content, the events that happen in each lesson, the kinds of practice and feedback, the grouping, and the media. Dick and Carey place it after assessment so that every strategy decision can be checked against "does this help learners perform on the assessment, and therefore on the job?"

Three frameworks organize most strategy decisions: Gagné's nine events for the structure of a lesson, Merrill's First Principles for the quality of the whole, and the cognitive research on practice, feedback, and scaffolding for the details.

Gagné's nine events of instruction

Gagné argued that learning requires a sequence of internal processes (attention, expectancy, retrieval, encoding, responding, reinforcement, retrieval cues, generalization) and that instruction should supply external events that support each. The nine events:

Event	Purpose	Examples
1. Gain attention	Orient the learner	A surprising fact, a problem, a short scenario, a question
2. Inform learners of the objective	Set expectancy	State what they will be able to do and why it matters
3. Stimulate recall of prior learning	Activate relevant knowledge	Quick review, a question about experience, a pretest item
4. Present the content	Provide the stimulus	Explanation, demonstration, worked example, reading, video
5. Provide learning guidance	Support encoding	Analogies, cues, examples and non-examples, concept maps, hints
6. Elicit performance	Have learners respond	Practice problems, simulations, role-play, application tasks
7. Provide feedback	Reinforce and correct	Specific, timely feedback on the practice
8. Assess performance	Confirm learning	Posttest, performance assessment
9. Enhance retention and transfer	Support generalization	Varied practice, spaced review, application to new contexts, job aids

The events are not a rigid script. A lesson may cycle through events 4 through 7 several times, and a problem-based lesson may start at event 6. But a lesson missing events 6 and 7 (practice and feedback) is a presentation, not instruction, and lessons missing event 9 rarely transfer.

Merrill's First Principles as a strategy check

Apply the five principles to the whole unit, not just each lesson:

Problem-centered. Is the instruction organized around a progression of real tasks, from simple to complex, rather than around topics? Show the whole task early, even if learners cannot yet do it.
Activation. Do learners recall or share relevant experience before new content? Do you surface misconceptions?
Demonstration. Do learners see the skill performed, with the expert's reasoning made visible, and with examples matched to the outcome type (worked examples for procedures, examples and non-examples for concepts)?
Application. Do learners perform the task with coaching that fades? Is practice varied across contexts?
Integration. Do learners reflect on, discuss, defend, or adapt what they learned? Do they carry something back into their own world?

Evidence-based practice design

The cognitive research on learning is consistent on several points that strategy should honor:

Retrieval practice. Recalling information strengthens retention far more than rereading it. Build low-stakes retrieval into every lesson.
Spacing. Practice distributed over time beats the same practice massed. Return to earlier objectives in later lessons.
Interleaving. Mixing problem types during practice improves discrimination and transfer, even though it feels harder.
Worked examples and fading. Novices learn procedures faster from studying worked examples than from unguided problem solving; as expertise grows, fade the examples into completion problems and then full problems.
Feedback. Specific, timely, and focused on the task and the process; not on the person. Delayed feedback can be as effective as immediate for retention if the learner engages with it.
Cognitive load. Working memory is limited. Remove extraneous load (decorative graphics, split attention between text and diagram, redundant narration of on-screen text), manage intrinsic load (sequence from simple to complex, pre-teach component skills), and use the freed capacity for germane processing (self-explanation, comparison).

Scaffolding and cognitive apprenticeship

Scaffolding is support that lets learners perform beyond their current unaided ability and that is withdrawn as competence grows. Cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, and Newman) names the moves: modeling (the expert performs and thinks aloud), coaching (guided practice with feedback), scaffolding and fading, articulation (learners explain their reasoning), reflection (learners compare their process with the expert's), and exploration (learners frame and solve their own problems). This sequence is a strong default for complex skills and is compatible with Gagné's events.

Sequencing content

Procedural tasks: sequence in the order performed, with branch decisions taught where they occur.
Hierarchical skills: teach subordinate skills before the skills that depend on them, but show the whole task first so learners know why.
Concepts: teach the defining attributes, then examples and non-examples with increasing subtlety, then classification practice.
Whole-task approaches (van Merriënboer's Four-Component Instructional Design): sequence a series of complete tasks from simple to complex, with supportive information, procedural information, and part-task practice provided just in time. Preferred for complex skills where component practice alone does not transfer.

Grouping and delivery

Strategy includes who learns with whom and where: self-paced, instructor-led, cohort-based, blended. Decide based on the learner and context analysis. Collaboration helps when the task benefits from multiple perspectives or when articulation is a goal; it hurts when it adds coordination load to a task that does not need it. Online delivery requires deliberate design for social presence and for the self-regulation that self-paced learning demands.

Media selection

Choose media after strategy, not before. The question is not "should we use video?" but "what does event 4 (presentation) or event 6 (practice) require, and which medium supports it best at acceptable cost?" Clark's long-standing argument is that media do not cause learning; methods do. Media constrain which methods are feasible. A simulation is worth building when the practice it enables cannot be provided otherwise; a video is worth producing when demonstration of a dynamic process is needed and text cannot convey it.

Writing the strategy for your plan

For each lesson or unit in your instructional plan, specify:

The objectives covered.
The nine events (which are present, how each is done, how long).
The practice and feedback design (type, quantity, spacing, fading).
The grouping and delivery mode.
The media, with a one-sentence justification tied to the event it serves.

Then check the whole plan against Merrill's principles and against cognitive load.

References

Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 21–29.

Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1989). Cognitive apprenticeship. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction (pp. 453–494). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.

Gagne, R. M., Wager, W. W., Golas, K. C., & Keller, J. M. (2005). Principles of instructional design (5th ed.). Wadsworth.

Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43–59.

Sweller, J., van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Paas, F. (2019). Cognitive architecture and instructional design: 20 years later. Educational Psychology Review, 31, 261–292.

van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Kirschner, P. A. (2018). Ten steps to complex learning (3rd ed.). Routledge.