Designing the Instructional Message (Week 9)

     In this chapter, Morrison, Ross, and Kemp give a detailed explanation of designing the instructional message. They divided the process into three parts: preinstructional strategy, signaling the structure of the text, the use of pictures and graphics.

     Preinstructional Strategies:

     At the beginning of every lesson, there is a warm-up or an icebreaker that helps the learner to prepare for the lesson. The authors mentioned four different procedures of preinstructional strategies. The first one is pretest which includes several questions about the upcoming instruction. The second strategy is a set of objectives which is prefered by more traidional instructors. It is to give a brief oral listed summary of what is coming. Third strategy is the overview, it is a written summary of what is expected. The last strategy is the advanced organizer which is more abstract. They also mentioned about graphic organizer which I have a lot of varieties. Fx:

     Signaling the structure of the text:

     It is all about gaining attention through how you write the instructional text; the headings, words, italic type, etc. We can manipulate the learners’ cognitive process by organizing the structure in a specific way. The authors mentioned “three critical design elements” that creates a finely printed instruction. First one is a set of particular components like words which helps the learner become aware of the structure. Secondly, the harmony of the structure is important which also helps the learners’ recall of information. Third, the content and the learners’ previous knowledge should have something in common to acquire the text clearly.

     The use of pictures and graphics:

     Showing something how to do is always better than giving just a written instruction. In this part, the authors mentioned using pictures and graphics in order to help the learner to acquire the necessary information easily. Here pictures and graphics are facilitators of learning. It also helps me to understand everything clearly, for example, if I am making an IKEA bookcase, the text in the instructions is not enough but the pictures at the end of the page help me to do it. Or in my class, whenever I show a picture about a picture of what I taught, it helps my student to comprehend better.