Instruct, initiate and activate.....

“Instruction is the set of events designed to initiate, activate, and support learning in the human learner." (Gagné, 1974).

On Wednesday afternoons I demontrate a first year physics lab to a group of chemisrty major students. Until now my teaching style would have been based around the ideals of constructivism, but through this pedagogy moduleI have begun to examine and develop my style of teaching considering the student and understanding that each teaching occasion is an opportunity to learn. I made a decision to change my approach in this labs as the students are only beginning their third level learning experience and their main area of study is not physics. I decide to actively implement a concept of active learning that we explored in the second pedagogy lecture; Gagné’s 9 events of instruction.

The concept of active learning was not new to me but Gagnés 9 events was new to me and I was very intrested in trying it out. In the pedagogy lecture we were given a few minutes to try and prep a lab/tutorial with these 9 steps in mind and I really felt it would be beneficial to the first year labs. I used the quick plan I had made in the lecture as a starting point for the lab. The lab was to demonstrate g with a simple pendulum. I worked through these steps and prepared the lab:

Gagné’s 9 events example:

1. "Hi guys! Please find a partner and we will start the lab"

2. "So today we will be demonstratin “g” the force of gravity using a simple pendulum"

3. "What is gravity? How does it relate to mass?"

4. List the experimental procedure

5. "For this experiment you will need to keep the angle below 5 degrees. Make sure you pick a point and begin to count from there....."

6. "Everybody begin and I will walk around and make sure we all know what we are doing and you can ask me any questions"

7. "That is a good result, because...." "Is that result as you expected? What if you tired..."

8. Assess experimental procedure. Lab report will be graded.

9. "So next week you will do an experimet to investigate "g" by free fall."

I found this approach for this lab very effective and while it is a similar approach that I have used subconsciously, having this actively in mind covers everything required for demonstrating these labs. The students were very responsive to the structure and were very comfortable asking questions as i walked around the lab. Even though Gangé was a well known behaivourist I found it easy to incorporate some of the constructive ideals. Through the 9 steps there are a few places to ask questions and contextualise the experiment, and to ensure the student has an understnading of why they are doing the various steps.

I really enjoyed this process and it will definitely be the approach I will take for this type of lab work. I am begining to put the concepts from the module into practice and i hope to compare and contrast these ideas in a view to develop my own pedadogy approach.