Gagne's Instructional Design Theory - My Views

This is for a writing prompt in the course: Teach English Now! Lesson Design and Assessment by Arizona State University through Coursera. 

Week 1

Please respond to the following prompt. Your response should be 5 - 7 sentences.

Which of the six events in Robert Gagne’s instructional design theory resonated the most with you? Why?

The event that resonated the most with me was gaining the attention and interest of the audience. This is extremely important especially when you are teaching something new. When you can’t get the attention of your students, you’ll have a hard time explaining things to them and their assessment would definitely be bad. I think that interacting with them right at the start of the lesson is a good way to make them notice you and at the same time, you’ll be able to gauge the students’ levels and adjust your teaching technique.

We all became students, so we know how hard it is to stay attentive in a rather boring class. For some, it may seem boring because you already know what the lesson was about and everything is just easy for you -- then you’ll definitely tend to fall asleep. Another reason is it may seem boring to you because you don’t know what the heck the teacher is talking about as it may be too advanced for you -- might as well sleep too. And the last reason I can think of, which teachers can definitely do something about, is it may seem boring to you because the teacher is so stiff and always facing the board. It seems that the teacher may be unconfident, not that knowledgeable with the subject or doesn’t really care if the students learn or not.

I think that gaining the attention and interest of the audience is very important as this will be the start of getting their attention and prolonging their attention span to be able to have a fruitful discussion or class.