Instructional design/Cognitive behaviors/Teaching Procedures, page 6

Instructional Design > Cognitive behaviors > Teaching Procedures > Define > Learn > Teach > Routine > Power > Steps > Try > Example

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Power Tactics for Teaching Procedures

Power Tactics, also known as "Enrichment Tactics," are used to increase the learner's efficiency with a procedure or to encourage the user to generalize the procedure to new situations. There are power tactics for generalities, examples, practice and feedback.

Power Tactics for a Generality

Attention-focusing. For procedures the most important aspect of the generality is the steps. Therefore, we should focus attention on the actions (mental or physical) which must be performed, and the order in which they should be performed.

Alternative representation. For procedures, the most useful alternatives are usually a flowchart or a paraphrase.

Mnemonic. In some procedures, it is hard to remember the order or nature of all the steps. In such cases, a mnemonic (like SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) can be very helpful to learners.

Power Tactics for Examples

The number of examples (or demonstrations) should be increased as the difficulty of the procedure increases.

Examples should be presented in an easy-to-difficult sequence.

Attention-focusing should relate the example to the generality, either by explaining in general terms what is being done in each step of the example or by highlighting the key actions and orderings.

An alternative representation for an example will often be in the form of a flowchart.

A reminder of the mnemonic can be helpful.

Common errors are useful to warn the student about, as long as they are indeed common (otherwise you might increase the chances of the errors being made) and as long as they are explained meaningfully to the learner.

Power Tactics for Practice

The number of practice items can be increased to enrich the instruction.

An easy-to-difficult sequence should also be used, as for examples.

Prompting is often helpful on early practice items when the procedure is a difficult one. Otherwise, power should be reserved for the feedback.

Power Tactics for Feedback

Attention-focusing should be used to relate the instance to the generality by pointing out, depending on the nature of the learner's mistake, the way an action (mental or physical) should have been performed, or the order in which it should have been performed. It should be the same as attention-focusing for examples.

A variety of representations is often helpful for the correct-answer feedback when a procedure is difficult.

A reminder of the mnemonic (if one was presented earlier) is often a very helpful aspect of feedback.

Of course, motivational enrichment can also be used: praise for correct answers and encouragement for wrong answers.

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Source

Procedure Using by Charles M. Reigeluth. Used by Permission.