Douglas felt like he’d seen it all. But apparently, not quite. Douglas had been in education his whole adult life. He’d gone straight into teaching out of graduate school when he was still a kid in his mid-twenties. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Indeed, forty years later, it now was a lifetime ago. In those forty years in education, Douglas had seen teaching fads and fashions come and go, so much so that he thought nothing was any longer new under the sun. Yet with his retirement right around the corner, it looked to Douglas as if the whole world of education had flipped upside down with the latest reforms. Douglas felt that maybe, just maybe, he needed to retire sooner rather than later.
Trends
Instruction always has trends. And trends in instruction can have big impacts on accreditation standards and the profile and performance of a school. School administrators and faculty members do well to be aware of trends in instruction. Schools and their faculty members don’t always have to adopt the latest and greatest fashion in instructional designs, theories, and methods. But the school that ignores trends, and the faculty that continues to practice forms of instruction that the field of education has long since passed, can do students serious disfavors, impacting school outcomes so severely as to threaten reputation, enrollment, and accreditation. No matter how fabulous a school’s facilities, famous its faculty, and brilliant its students, the instructional program of a school is still a school’s beating heart. And when that heartbeat slows and stutters, students suffer. Ensure that your school remains abreast of instructional trends. Doing so could make all the difference for your school.
Experiential
Experiential learning has been a significant trend in instructional methods and designs. Experiential learning exposes students to life-like instructional settings inside and outside the classroom, designed to stimulate student interest, effort, and engagement around instructional designs. Simulations, labs, role plays, and case studies are examples of in-classroom experiential learning designs. Internships, service learning, on-site and field studies, and studies abroad are experiential learning designs outside the classroom. Experiential learning shows students how practitioners use the subject’s knowledge and skills for productive work, making the studies instantly relevant and practical, and increasing student concentration and effort. Instructors can incorporate experiential learning units within a traditional classroom lecture instructional format. Schools can also offer experiential learning courses within the required or elective curriculum. Experiential learning offers powerful instructional design options.
Adaptive
Adaptive learning, also called personalized learning, is another popular trend in instructional design. Adaptive learning modifies the instructional content to fit individual student needs. Adaptive learning facilitates multiple tracks and levels through a course or subject, ensuring that students at all stages of learning have the instruction they need. Adaptive learning is generally self-paced. An initial assessment determines the individual student’s knowledge and skill level, and sets the student’s initial course. Automated responses, frequent assessments, algorithms, and artificial intelligence adjust the course content to the student’s learning pace, keeping the student in the zone of proximal development. Adaptive learning is thus efficient and engaging for students, at whatever level or stage of learning they present. Adaptive learning generally requires substantial investment in technology and course and content design. Instructors using more-traditional instructional forms can nonetheless adopt discrete elements of adaptive learning at various points in instruction both to aid lower-level learners and challenge higher-level learners.
Social
Social learning is another popular trend in instructional design, although also a longstanding if largely unconscious technique. Social learning involves demonstration of the learning goal for the student to observe and imitate. Steps in social learning include attention, observation, recall, rehearsal, and refinement. The student first directs attention to the learning goal. The student then observes the instructor or a more-advanced student perform the learning goal, which may be the correct working out of a problem, the articulation of a correct response, or the competent exercise of a skill. The student then recalls what the student observed before personally rehearsing the observed performance. The instructor or other students then guide and critique the student to refine the student’s performance. Social learning goes on to some degree in every classroom. But newer intentional social-learning designs make the technique explicit and emphasized.
Mobile
Mobile learning is an increasingly natural and convenient technique that takes advantage of the ubiquity of cell phones, tablets, and other electronic devices with wifi signals. Mobile learning places instructional content on mobile devices, accessible to the student at any location and often asynchronously at any time. Mobile learning increases student access to instruction in general while also increasing available student study time. Students commuting, traveling, working, providing dependent care, and engaging in other activities can use down time for more-frequent and continuous studies. Mobile learning may include adaptive, self-paced learning features so that students can complete course units and assessments on their mobile devices. But instructors using traditional classroom instruction designs can still offer students mobile-learning resources to supplement their studies.
Interactive
Interactive learning is another significant trend in instructional design. Interactive learning emphasizes student engagement. The interactive classroom is a hive of activity, with students working in pairs and groups, or on projects, problems, and other activities. Interactive learning is sometimes associated with the flipped classroom where students watch lectures or do readings outside of class and then come to class prepared to do what would usually have been homework, and so actively engage the subject in class rather than at home. Interactive learning may also offer immediate feedback on problem solutions and question answers, either electronically or with peer or instructor in-class review. Interactive learning theory focuses on the gains students can make when using information rather than passively receiving it. Once again, instructors can readily incorporate aspects of interactive learning in an otherwise traditional classroom instructional format.
Analytics
Learning analytics is increasingly prevalent in instruction, as increasing technology use for instruction makes more data available in a form ready for analysis. Learning analytics involves collecting information on student performance to analyze trends, patterns, gaps, and adjustments. The data collection can be assessments, observation, surveys, self-reports, and evaluation and scoring of any kind of paper, problem set, skill demonstration, or other assignment. Artificial intelligence tools and other technology can aid the analysis to reveal patterns, enabling adept instructors to alter content or instructional resources or methods. Instructors have long analyzed student performance but now have additional data from technology and powerful new technology tools. Instructors can employ learning analytics in traditional classroom instructional formats, with relatively simple data-collection tools and techniques.
Gamification
Gamification is an increasingly attractive instructional design, although still relatively little used. Gamification makes a game out of learning, with challenges and rewards, to stimulate student interest, emotion, and competition. Increased student use of electronic games using gaming devices or tablets and cell phones invites instructors to mimic the gaming experience but in an educational context. Gamification of instruction may involve elaborate digital games approaching the design if not the sophistication of popular video games. Gamification, though, need not involve elaborate digital arcade-like videos. Gamification can use simple cards, paper, and pen, or simple graphic images and badges as artificial rewards. Any element of competition, humor, excitement, and fun structured around learning goals is a gamification technique. Gamification techniques are thus possible to enhance traditional classroom instructional formats.
Microlearning
Microlearning is an emerging trend that fits the increasing availability and use of technology in learning. Microlearning breaks course content down into small bits for students to master quickly and easily. Students then gradually connect bit to bit until they have assembled the sophisticated frameworks that the course content demands. Microlearning enables students to focus on manageable quantities of information, bit by bit, increasing student confidence in learning. Microlearning also enables students to rehearse learned bits with a spaced frequency for greater retention. Microlearning, though, can require skilled ordering and layering of bits to help students see their proper relationships. Instructors can with some creativity apply microlearning techniques in otherwise traditional classroom instructional formats or in resources offered outside of the classroom.
Chatbots
Chatbots are another emerging technology ready to take instructional design by storm. Chatbots simulate human discussion either in machine voice or text. Artificial-intelligence-powered chatbots can use their natural language processing powers to respond to questions students pose on any subject. Instructors can refine chatbot responses to ensure accuracy or appropriateness to the instructed subject or permit the chatbot to use their AI large language models to generate responses. Students can use an AI-powered chatbot as a tutor or similar study assistant, correcting answers, suggesting edits, proposing problem approaches, and solving problems by demonstration. AI-powered chatbots can substitute for certain aspects of learning support traditionally supplied by tutors, teaching assistants, peer study groups, and instructors. Chatbots can be a powerful instructional resource and tool providing outside-the-classroom study support for students struggling with traditional classroom instruction.
Multimodal
Multimodal learning is another emerging trend in instructional design. Multimodal learning offers students a wider variety of instructional designs, permitting them to choose their preferred resource or method, and mix resources and methods within or across learning units. The proliferation of technology tools and approaches to using them for instruction enables instructors to offer multiple approaches, reiterating the same instructional content toward the same learning objectives but in different formats and approaches. A student might, for instance, choose microlearning for one unit with abundant technical detail, experiential learning for another unit with fewer details but greater necessity for subtle clinical judgments, interactive learning for content rehearsal, memory, and review, and an AI-powered chatbot for problem solving and periodic inquiries. The widespread use of learning management systems through which to offer multiple resources and of mobile learning for asynchronous and continuous study promote multimodal learning, even when the instructor otherwise retains a relatively traditional classroom instruction format.
Reflection
What forum or method does your school use to promote faculty member engagement with new and emerging instructional designs? Does your school have a faculty leader or leaders in instructional design on whom other instructors rely for inspiration? How experiential is your school’s program? Does your school have instructors who are deploying adaptive-learning designs? Does your school have instructors who emphasize social learning with elaborate demonstrations and opportunities for students to practice? Are students at your school able to use their mobile devices for their school studies, at remote locations and at any time? Does your school have a technology specialist or instructional designer with the skill to help instructors develop mobile instructional resources and designs? Which instructors at your school have the most-interactive classroom? Does your school use learning analytics well?
Key Points
Trends in instruction can quickly and deeply influence school success.
Experiential learning places students in life-like practice settings.
Adaptive learning adjusts instruction to each student’s own pace.
Social learning demonstrates performances for students to imitate.
Mobile learning makes instructional content available on devices.
Interactive learning engages students actively in class with feedback.
Learning analytics collects learning data for analysis and adjustment.
Microlearning offers learning bits to readily master and accumulate.
AI-powered chatbots can provide tutorial support for student inquiry.
Multimodal learning encourages students to use multiple approaches.