Page 179 - Making Instruction Work

chap 15 3/11/97 5:08 PM Page 165

module drafting 165

Using Existing Material

It is a waste of time to “reinvent the wheel,” so save time by
locating existing material that can be used as part or all of the
instruction. If it already exists, save your time and use it.
But use only those portions that are relevant to accomplish-
ing the objectives. If you make students sit through an entire
30-minute video, for example, when only 3 minutes of it are
relevant to the objective, you’re not only wasting their time,
you’re squandering their motivation to learn. The same is true
if you make them read an entire chapter of text when only one
page will help accomplish an objective. The object is to locate
potentially useful material and identify those pieces that will
be directly useful in helping someone toward an objective.
When potentially useful materials include a textbook, you
will seldom need to include the entire text. Textbooks are writ-
ten in a sequence that makes sense to the author, or in a
sequence that offers a “logical” presentation of the subject
matter. They are seldom written in a sequence that is logical
from the students’ point of view. Further, they always contain
a good deal more content than is needed to accomplish the
objectives you have on hand. Therefore, when a textbook
includes material useful for accomplishing one or more objec-
tives, portions of that text will usually be used in a sequence
other than the one in which it was written.
This is not a problem, of course, except when an accrediting
agency wants to know why you are using the text “out of
sequence”or not using a text at all. If your objectives have been
derived from a good analysis, however, you will be able to show
the rationale that caused you to select the content that you did.
“Or,” said one of the kindly souls who helped test the manu-
script for this book, “you can always send them an ‘approved’
course outline and teach another.”