Learning Activities

The Learning Activities file contains classroom activities to provide application practice and opportunity for group interaction.

The first, Norman Hope (a pun on Chicago Hope--you could substitute your town's name) is a case situation for role playing in which the instructor as leader can play the role of Leonard McCoy, Hospital Administrator, in a staff meeting with key hospital personnel, working of the problem of the terribly inaccurate blood pressure readings. The case is totally fictitious but represents a terrific way to get started in thinking about the importance of congruence between needs, learning goals, learning activities (instruction), and assessment. You could think of it as a "curriculum alignment" exercise.

Another activity, a group discussion activity, takes place within a fictitious company, Wiz Tech in which the head of the company has hired you as the new head of training, and has asked you to develop training on the company's benefits program, to be used with new employees. Groups are asked to consider and discuss questions and procedures they could employ for getting and using information related to the need for instruction, the learning context, and the learners. This is the best activity we have found to help make needs assessment meaningful (frequently a VERY difficult task in our experience).

Other activities assist engagement with questions in designing instruction for problem solving, concept learning, declarative knowledge, psychomotor skills, and attitudes. Another activity helps learners think about appropriate technology, to go along with reading the last chapter of the text.