Teaching Strategies

Teaching strategies are the different methods an instructor employs in order to present the instruction to learners. These strategies are used to accomplish the performance objectives identified when you designed the course blueprint.

Once the instructional blueprint as been created, an instructor begins to organize the content for instruction. Generally you will need to make organizational decisions on:

• The type and amount of content to be presented during the instruction,
• How the content will be sequenced,
• What learning activities and presentations will be made to teach the content.

An instructor may decide that the best way (strategy) to present material in a specific lesson is through class lecture. It may be more appropriate to teach other material by using computer simulations, writing a paper after reflection on a reading assignment, in class panel discussion, or service projects outside the classroom. Whatever strategy is selected for the instruction, you need to remember that it must support the performance objectives for the lesson — the new behaviors you want your learners to use once they have completed the learning activity. A lecture may need to be supplemented with group work or collaborative activities. Thus the selection of a teaching strategy can be rather complex.

Generally the selection of different teaching strategies will be influenced by your concept of learning. In 1956, Benjamin Bloom helped develop a classification system for intellectual behavior. Today it is often referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom divided learning into three overlapping learning domains (cognitive, psychomotor, and affective). Instructors often select teaching strategies based on different facets of these learning domains.

Another consideration in the selection of teaching strategies comes from a relatively new area known as learning styles. Based on recent cognitive research, Howard Gardner from Harvard University has identified seven distinct learning styles. His work advocates that "students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways." The concept of learning styles supports the initial analysis step in instruction design — the need to understand the learner before designing the instruction.

Smith a Ragan provide a series of PowerPoint slides (links below) that discuss different teaching strategies for different types of instruction. The slides supplement the indepth coverage of teaching strategies in their textbook.

As you make decisions on "how" to present content to learners, an instructor must also select the type of media to deliver the instruction, such as video, computer simulation, posters, charts, etc. Selection of the appropriate medium (singular) should be dictated by what you want to accomplish as a learning outcome and the types of learners in the instructional process. Do not fall into the trap of only using one medium when designing your lesson. It is easy to simply use "lecture" as both the teaching strategy and delivery method. Use a variety of media in order to hold learner attention and facilitate effective instruction!

The decisions made in selecting a teaching strategy will have a direct bearing on the actional instruction. Smith and Ragan list the following:

• Speed of presentation (pace)
• Number of successful experiences learners should have in practice
  
• Types of statements to convince students of the relevancy of the instruction
  
• Techniques for gaining and focusing attention and the frequency of use of these techniques
  
• Context of examples and practice items
  
• Amount of structure and organization
  
• Medium/media of instruction
  
• Level of concreteness/abstraction
  
• Grouping of students
  
• Size of instructional chunks
  
• Response mode (written, oral, etc.)
  
• Number and difficulty of examples and practice
  
• Type of feedback given after practice items
  
• Level of learner control
  
• Reading level
  
• Vocabulary and terminology used
  
• Amount and types of reinforcement
  
• Amount of time allowed for instruction
  
• Amount and type of learning guidance, cues, and prompts

The information presented above should help you get a better feel for the complexity of instruction design. Creating and selecting appropriate teaching strategies is crucial to the overall success of the instructional process. This is one reason why instructional design is often done as a team, involving the instructor (content expert), a professional instructional designer, and media expert.