Robert M. Gagne

 

Robert Gagne
 
Robert Mills Gagne famous for his work in human learning and his prominent work, The Conditions of Learning.  He was born in 1916 and past away in 2002.  He career spanned some 50 years, some in the service of the military and others in academic.  It was in 1962, he joined the American Institutes of Research and took up the position of Director of Research.  During this time, the first edition of the book, The Conditions of Learning, was published.
 
5 Major Categories of Learning Outcomes
  • Verbal Information
  • Intellectual Skills
    • Discrimination, Concrete concepts, Defined concepts, Rules, Higher order rules
  • Cognitive Strategies
  • Attitudes
  • Motor Skills
9 Events of Instruction
  • Gaining Attention
  • Informing Learners of the Objective
  • Stimulating recall of prior learning
  • Presenting the content
  • Providing learning guidance
  • Eliciting performance
  • Providing feedback
  • Assessing performance
  • Enhancing retention and transfer
Gaining Attention
  • This event will activate the mental process of reception and the pattern of neural impulses. This should be the primary event in order of learning takes place. The question to be answer is: Are you paying attention? A change in an external stimulus (called novelty) must be produce and maintain to call the attention, in a way that appeal the learner’s curiosity.
Informing Learners of the Objective
  • The mental process to be activated is expectancy. Expectation can affect motivation and the rest of the instruction. The mental executive control tends to select an adequate strategy of learning. This is performed by setting goals to be achieved and skills to be developed at the end of the instruction.
  • These first two events will prepare the learning for the following sequence
Stimulating Recall of Prior Learning
  • The mental process that this event will activate is called retrieval, in other words pulling information stored in the long-term memory and place it into the working memory. Since most of the learning is built in what we already know , the instruction must help the learner to recall knowledge that has been acquired and then transfer it into a new situation.
Presenting the Content
  • This event will activate the mental process of selective perception and pattern recognition, which will depend on the type of instruction (Intellectual, verbal, attitude, or psychomotor). It is applied by displaying the distinctive features of the instruction.
Providing Learning Guidance
  • The mental process to be activated is semantic encoding, which is the entry of the new learning material into the long-term memory in a meaningful way. The type of guidance can be more or less depending in the characteristic of the instruction, the type of learner, the level of the instruction and the skills to be performed. The instructor can use cues or hint for the retrieval of information.
Eliciting Performance
  • This event allows learners to confirm their learning by having them “produce” a performance for themselves, their peers, their instructor and others.
  • It is expected that during this step the learner will not perform the task perfectly because they are still improving.
Providing Feedback
  • The learner can now receive feedback regarding their performance.
  • The feedback given will depend on the type of error. (i.e. Did the learner know that they were likely incorrect vs. the learner believed they were correct.)
Assessing Performance
  • After a learner has had a chance to perform and fine-tune the desired skills, knowledge, etc. it will be officially assessed.
  • This can be done with term papers, tests, portfolios, demonstrations, etc.
Enhancing Retention & Transfer
  • This step should be taking place throughout the previous steps.
  • Some examples: Having spaced reviews, having students think about their own knowledge, performing the task after the formal assessing has taken place.
References
  • Photo: web.syr.edu
  • Photo: www.bestwebbuys.com
  • Psychology of learning for instruction, Driscoll(2005, pages 372-379), published by Pearson
  • Principles of Instructional design, Gagne, Wager, Golas and Keller(2005, pages 194-207), published by Thompson
  • Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology: 1982. American Psychologist, January 1983.
  • Photo:  http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/gagnesevents/
 
 
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Any opinions expressed here, except as specifically noted, are those of the individual authors or commenters and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, or Utah State University.