Gagne and Interactions

Robert Gagne’s “Nine Events of Instruction” describes a model of instruction where each step builds on the preceding step. While I think these steps are fairly intuitive, it makes sense for instructors to be familiar with them to ensure that their lessons are following a logical format. Having these steps in mind when planning a lesson will help the teacher to organize their ideas and create an engaging experience.

We learned that there are three different types of interactions in the classroom: student/student, instructor/student, and student/content. It’s important to plan lessons with different types of interactions in mind. You would not want to use only the instructor/student type of interaction because I don’t think students would be fully engaged for the entire lesson. However, if you broke the instructor/student interactions up with some small group activities (student/student) and possibly a project (student/content), it would create a much more dynamic lesson. Some steps seem to fit better with certain types of interactions, like “Step 2-establish a purpose”, seems like it would be a student/instructor interaction. However, I actually think that you could use any of the interactions in any step of Gagne’s model of instruction and trying something unexpected may improve the learning experience.