Model Instructional Design Principles

Coaches should model instructional design principles with teachers to create effective digital learning environments.

ISTE explains that coaches ‘should intentionally and transparently adopt and demonstrate established and evolving best practices and guidelines for designing learning experiences for specific learners. Coaches should do this to support educators to create effective online virtual learning environments that use technology in the classroom to deliver content, personalised learning and manage student progress toward learning objectives.’

In other words, coaches should model instructional design principles with educators to create effective digital learning environments. Instructional design is rooted in learning principles like behaviourism, focusing on observable behaviours and using reinforcements for desired outcomes, cognitive psychology which guides designers in understanding how learners perceive, remember, and process information, leading to tailored content, and constructivism, which emphasises active learning and knowledge construction by learners. Robert Gagne described nine instructional design principles: gain attention (or capture interest), state objectives, stimulate recall of prior learning, present the content, provide learning guidance, elicit performance (activities or assessments to demonstrate understanding), provide feedback, assess performance, enhance retention and transfer (reinforce learning and help learners apply knowledge to real-world situations).

To encourage teachers to differentiate, coaches can guide use of learning menus and also use of Channels/ break out rooms in Teams for group work and differentiation, and to use the Group distribution option within ClassNotebook pages in Teams for differentiation.

Coaches can also consider the golden circle and Simon Sinek‘s advice of starting with the why. Coaches can help teachers understand the ‘why’ of instructional design principles by creating instructional videos using Stream in Staff Teams or Flip.