Page 144 - Making Instruction Work

chap 12 3/11/97 5:03 PM Page 130

130 making instruction work

provide relevant practice of the skill in question.
Before deriving the content of your instruction, therefore,
you should describe the “right stuff” that will be needed for
practice of each objective. Not only will that make it easier to
derive the instructional content of the lessons (modules), it
will make the actual development process go faster.

How to Do It

Here’s how to describe relevant practice for an objective.
Once you’ve done it for six or so objectives, it will only take a
minute or two to do it from then on.
1. Performance. Write down what the student would be
doing when practicing the essence of the objective.

Example: If the objective says, “Be able to assemble
schlorks . . .,” you would write “Assemble schlorks.”

Example: If the objective says, “Be able to write a com-
puter program,” you would write “Write computer pro-
gram.”

2. The right stuff. Write down the things (the right stuff)
that you would have to provide in order to make the
practice happen. (The objective will tell you.)

Example: If the objective says, “Given a set of parts and
a standard tool kit . . . ,” you would list “Set of parts” and
“Tool kit.”

Example: If the objective says,“Given a prospective cus-
tomer and a product to sell . . .,” you would write
“Prospective customer,” and “(insert the name of the
product).”