Week 1: Prescriptive Principles for Instructional Design

Summary of Prescriptive Principles for Instructional Design by M. David Merrill, Matthew Barclay, and Andrew van Schaak

First Principles

Merrill, Barclay, and van Schaak introduce the First Principles of Instruction that they have come up with after examining many instructional design theories and models and looking for the underlying prescriptive principles common among almost all of the theories and models.

These First Principles are TADAI:

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• Task-centered problem (learning through doing)
• Activation (accessing prior knowledge)
• Demonstration (demonstrating and examples)
• Application (practice WITH feedback)
• Integration (reflection, discussion, etc...constructivist learning)

Merrill et al have determined that all ISD models follow these same principles; however, not all models use all the the principles. They theorize that there is a direct correlation between the effectiveness of an instruction and the number of principles they employ. A study done by Merrill and Thompson with NETg supported this theory, because the group trained using the First Principles performed notably higher than the group that only received demonstration and significantly higher than the control group that received no instruction. In addition to the difference in performance (both on mastery of skills and time took to complete the assessment), student and instructor feedback also supported the hypothesis because the First Principles group reported the highest feelings of satisfaction with the instruction.

Other Instructional Design Principles

Merrill et al then introduced several ID models (Clark & Mayer's Principle for Multimedia and E-Learning, Vad der Meij's Minimalist Principles, Foshay et al's Cognitive Training Model, Seidel et al's Instruction Principles based on Learning Principles, and van Merrienboer's 4C/ID model) and then showed via comparison tables how they perceived the model's principles to align with the identified First Principles. 

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Designing Task-Center Instruction

Finally, Merrill et al suggests an approach for designing instruction that incorporates all of the First Principles, Merrill's Pebble-in-the-Pond approach. And then provides a table that illustrates the approach, using general explanations for each step and how the steps interact with one another

My response

Overall, I found that I accepted Merrill et al's theory of First Principles; however, sometimes the broadness/generality of the principles seemed too vague to me. For example, one of the First Principles is Application Principle; part of its explanation is that the learners will "receive intrinsic or corrective feedback" (p. 175), but it doesn't specify timeliness of feedback. For the most part, I have accepted good feedback to mean timely feedback. And many would say that timely feedback equals instant feedback (especially when it comes to online learning). However Allen's eLearning principles state "Delay judgement: if learners have to wait for confirmation, they will typically reevaluate for themselves while the tension mounts - essentially reviewing and rehearsing" (p. 179). Merrill et al identify this as applying the Application Principle, so I'm interested to see how they could explain that the same principle would be also applied for van Meji's "Provide on-the-spot error information" (p. 179). They list both as examples of Application Principle. Do they not care how/when feedback is given, only that it is given? This seems odd to me.

Secondly, I had a hard time distinguishing in my mind the difference between Task-centered Approach and Application Principle, because I typically think of the practice you do while completing a task-based activity (learning while doing) is the application (practice). I'm not sure if they are saying that the task-centered goal is the general approach to the design (major objective: change the oil in a car) and to achieve this you must provide application practice with feedback for the steps to achieve the overall task/learning  (the individual learning objectives/steps needed to complete to successfully change the oil). Or if it is just saying that the task-centered portion is only during the actual active learning (content) and the application is only during the practice portion after the content portion. I may need a little more discussion to understand the difference between these two.

This is the first time I've encountered Merrill's Pebble-in-the-Pond approach, and I'm not really sure I understand it. I will try to summarize it using a language learning example:

1. Whole task/Identify a whole task - Have a conversation about age and birthdays in X language (beginner level).
2. Progression/Identify series of subtasks needed to achieve whole task - How to ask and give you age, how to ask and give a date
3. Components/Identify components to achieve subtasks - How to ask and give you age: appropriate grammar and syntax (verb choice and conjugation: I am # years vs. I have # years, modification for case of noun and number adjective, etc), cultural issues (is it impolite to ask an age? do people generally lie and/or not know their age?); how to ask and give a date (month vocabulary, how to express years, order of date mm/dd/yy), cultural issues (not know their birthdate)
4. Strategy/Specify an instructional strategy - modeling (show a video), scaffolding (teacher/student practice), cooperative learning (student/student practice), etc
5. Interface/Specify the user interface - ?? Online vs. classroom? Small group vs. pair work? Identify multimedia.  Or is this approach only for elearning??
6. Production/Produce the course - self explanatory.

Comments on how I applied this appreciated!

A few other comments as I read: 

• While overall I like Clark & Mayer's Principles for Multimedia Learning, I was surprised that they advocate "students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and narration and text (p. 147)" (p. 178). While this may be true, I would be wary of designing an instruction that didn't provide text as well as narration because of accessibility for hearing impaired learners. I am very familiar with adding alt descriptions for visual items in a program to be read by screenreaders for the visual impaired, however, I don't know what the alternative is for hearing impaired people if you do not provide text somewhere. 
• I was also interested why van Meij says to "Prevent mistakes whenever possible" (p. 179) as part of the Minimalist Principles. In language learning, we don't discourage mistakes, because they are most often learning oppurtunities. Often times making a mistake and then having to correct oneself for comprehension makes a bigger impact on language acquisition than direct teaching. (Obviously you have to be wary of repeated mistakes without self-corrections however.)

A random criticisms:

• Did anyone else notice they have two Table 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, and 14.4? I get that they were in different sections of the chapter, but they should have either carried them forward in the chapter as 14.6 and beyond or done something to differentiate between the chapter sections like 14-1.1 14-2.1 etc. JMO. :)
• Why didn't they follow Clark & Mayer's principle of "Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures (tables!) are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen" (p. 177). Small criticism, but I hate having to flip back and forth between pages with the paragraph isn't on the same page as the Table to which it refers!