Gagne's instructional design theory

Introduction to Gagne

Gagne's work has been particularly influential in training and the design of instructional materials. In fact, the idea that instruction can be systematically designed can be attributed to Gagne and a handful of others. It's interesting to speculate how his early work in Air Force training may have shaped his theory. I wonder if it might have evolved differently had he been working with college students, or 3rd graders?

Be sure you understand the difference between theories of learning and theories of instruction. The Driscoll chapter does a pretty good job of explaining this.

Gagne's instructional theory has three major elements. First, it is based on a taxonomy, or classification, of learning outcomes. Second, it proposes particular internal and external conditions necessary for achieving these learning outcomes. And third, it offers nine events of instruction, which serve as a template for developing and delivering a unit of instruction.

Gagne's taxonomy of learning outcomes

The notion of different "levels" of learning or knowing something is a very useful one in education. You have probably been in or observed a class where the teacher said she or he wanted to help student achieve high-level skills such as being able to analyze problems, evaluate cases, etc.; but when you looked at the test items for the class, they mostly had to do with memorizing terms and definitions. This is a "learning-levels" problem.

For example, what does it mean to ask if someone "knows" a concept such as "analysis of variance," (ANOVA) the statistical procedure that most of us have encountered--or will? Do we want to know if they can

state or write the formula for ANOVA?
explain what the formula means?
use the formula correctly when told to do so?
know when to use it, without being told?
know how to interpret the results? etc., etc.

Gagne and others thought it was important for teachers and instructional designers to think carefully about the nature of the skill or task they wanted to teach, then to make sure that the learner had the necessary prerequisites to acquire that skill. Gagne also stressed that practice and assessment should match the target skill. In other words, if we want someone to know when to use an ANOVA, and be able to use it to answer real questions, then it is of little use to test them on their ability to write the formula.

Of the four categories of learning outcomes Gagne proposes, the one that seems to have gotten the most attention is intellectual skills. It is important to understand that the five sub-categories of intellectual skills are believed to be hierarchical. That is, for a given skill at, say, the level of "defined concepts," there should be underlying discriminations and concrete concepts that must first be mastered.

According to Gagne's theory, the way to determine the prerequisites for a given learning objective is to conduct a learning hierarchy. A learning hierarchy (sometimes called a task analysis) is constructed by working backwards from the final learning objective. Suppose, for example, that the desired learning outcome is to be able to be able to balance one's checkbook upon receiving the monthly bank statement. We would ask ourselves, what are the component skills of balancing a checkbook? They might include things such as, identifying the relevant information on the bank statement, accurately entering deductions and deposits in the check register, and knowing to add back to one's ending balance any outstanding checks in order to reconcile the checkbook balance with that indicated on the bank statement. Assuming we decided that these were, in fact, the three component skills, we would then need to analyze each of these into more basic component skills. How many levels "deep" would we need to go in such a hierarchy? One answer to that question would be, until we reach the level of skills that we know the target learners already possess.

The conditions of learning

A central notion in Gagne's theory is that different kinds of learning outcomes have different internal and external conditions that support them. The external conditions are things that the teacher or instructional designer arranges during instruction. The internal conditions are skills and capabilities that the learner has already mastered (such as those that would be revealed by a learning hierarchy).

The events of instruction

Gagne's nine proposed "events of instruction" are a sequence of steps to guide the teacher or instructional designer. According to the theory, using this sequence should help to insure that the learner masters the desired objective. The framework has been adapted for use in a variety of classroom settings, including college teaching. However, you can probably see that adapting the "events" to many classroom settings is problematic. Most teachers do not use the kind of language contained in this framework (e.g., terms such as "presenting the stimulus", or "eliciting performance"). In fact, the whole idea of framing a course as a series of skills that can be practiced and performed by students is an unfamiliar concept to many teachers. Think back to some of your own college courses. What skills did you acquire in history, philosophy, or biology courses? Did you get a chance to practice these skills in class? How were you assessed on them?

Learning activities

3.1 Learning outcome examples

For each classification of learning outcomes in Gagne's taxonomy (i.e., verbal information, all five intellectual skill categories, cognitive strategies, attitudes, and motor skills), generate your own new example of a performance objective that would fit in that classification. That is, create an example that you haven't seen in the text or on the Web.

Then, write a paragraph expressing your own opinion about the usefulness of performance objectives such as these in whatever field of education you're interested in.

3.2 Comparing theories, Part 1

One of the goals of this course is to look not just at individual theories, but to compare theories according to criteria of interest to us. Now that we have examined two theories, we have something to compare. For both Skinner's behaviorism and Gagne's instructional design theory, try to answer the following questions:

What aspects of learning are addressed by the theory?
How is learning defined by the theory?
What processes are proposed to account for learning?
What are the major implications for teaching or instructional design, according to the theory?
What implications for teaching or instructional design seem most important to you?

You may find this activity a little challenging. Do your best, but don't spend too much time on this. What I'm looking for is no more than a few sentences for each theory on each question.

Last Updated: 10, 1999