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“Education remains a positive, significant, and profitable investment for individuals. On average, another year of education produces a private rate of return to schooling in excess of 5−8% a year. As such, there are few better investments one can make.”

Harry Anthony Patrinos, World Bank and Georgetown University, USA

Principles of instruction

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Something with extensive research on it and based on more then 200 years experimental findings can be summarized on these principles (Merrill, 2007):

  • Task centered approach;
  • Activation principle (prior knowledge);
  • Demonstration Principle;
  • Application Principle;
  • Integration Principle;

This can be more concrete: prepare pupils to be ready; present the new lesson; associate it with prior knowledge; use examples; test pupils to ensure they learn it;

4C/ID is one of instructional blueprints that facilitate the integration of those principles.

For multimedia learning, you can have this concrete sets of guidance lighthouses:

  • Students learn better from words + pictures presented simultaneously than just words or picture and words in successively different pages;
  • Extraneous materials should be excluded;
  • Animation + narration is better then narration + on-screen text;
  • Design effects are stronger for low-knowledge  learners then for high-knowledge learners, and for high-spatial learners;

But if you want to start with small but efficient principles, follow the minimalist van Meij, 1998 proposal:

  • Provide an immediate opportunity to act;
  • Select real tasks for the learning activities;
  • Verify if the tasks are consistent with the overall task;
  • Prevent mistakes;
  • Provide error information;
  • Be brief;
  • Provide a closure for chapters;
  • Respect the user;
  • On the spot error info
  • Encourage exploration and innovation.

sources: Prescriptive Principles for Instructional Design, MERRIL; BARCLAY; SCHAAK; p.173, Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technlogy, third edition, 2011

 

Merril 2007:

https://mdavidmerrill.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/task_centered_strategy_published.pdf

https://mdavidmerrill.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/firstprinciplessynthesis.pdf

Research Reason’s for adopting bLearning

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Research reason’s for adopting bLearning:

  1. Improvement of learning effectiveness: student and faculty satisfaction (impact on learning and workload, in spice of the fact that in the beginning there is an enormous workload); student success, less drop outs, increase success rates and improvement on skills;
  2. Increase access and convenience ;
  3. Greater cost effectiveness: it may occur a drop in cost but its not guaranteed;

Success of the bLearning depends on the institutional support, student and faculty centered approaches  and the teacher training in this areas: Instructional models; staff development; course structures; assessment designs; trail and error mind set;

Dangers: domesticating tech to support old practices;

Source: Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, Third Edition, Edited by SPECTOR, J. Michael; MERRIL, M. David; MERRIENBOER, Jeroen; DRISCOLL, Marcy; 2011, p.269, Blended Learning Environments, GRAHAM, Charles; DZIUBAN, Charles;