Page 124 - Making Instruction Work

chap 10 3/11/97 4:57 PM Page 110

110 making instruction work

my course (or somebody else’s course); skills below the
line will be assumed to be brought by entering students
and will therefore be considered prerequisites.

Example #1: After reviewing your TPop. description, you find
that it is reasonable to assume that most or all incoming stu-
dents will be able to use a computer word-processing applica-
tion to write letters. So you base your instruction on that
assumption. You decide not to teach students how to use the
application. Instead, you will teach only the more advanced
applications, and you will turn your assumption into a prereq-
uisite objective, as follows:

Given a Spelgud word-processing application and one or
more draft letters, enter and save the letters in the applica-
tion.

Example #2: Refer to the fold-out hierarchy on the last page of
this book. The target population for a course in troubleshoot-
ing consists of people who have had experience in working
with a variety of equipment. Though their experience varies, it
is reasonable to assume that all of them can perform the skills
shown below the heavy line. Those skills, therefore, will not be
taught. Instead, they will be considered prerequisites and
entering students will be so informed.

To Learn More: See Resources #1, #5, #12, #15, and #16.