Instructional Podcast: Robert Gagne's Gain Attention Event

This podcast episode discusses the first event in Robert Gagné's nine events of instruction, which is gaining attention. It emphasizes the importance of grabbing students' attention and offers various ways to do so, such as using icebreakers or discussing current events. The reflection prompts listeners to think about successful and unsuccessful attention-gaining activities and provides guidance on how to improve them. It also mentions the integration of flow theory into instruction design, highlighting the importance of aligning activities with learning outcomes and tailoring them to the target audience. The episode concludes by suggesting further reading on flow theory and encouraging listeners to seek help if needed. Hello and welcome to the Evening Sparrow podcast. I am Casey Jacobson, an instructional designer and training specialist for Evening Sparrow Training. This podcast is the first of nine episodes where we are going to help you reflect on your progress in implementing Robert Gagné's nine events of instruction. As you recall, the nine events are meant to be sequential in nature, so we'll begin the series by reflecting on the first event, gain attention. The purpose of the gain attention step is to quickly grab the students' attention and focus them on the learning topic. There are many ways to gain students' attention and there is no one right way to do it. In the group presentation, we share some ideas on how to gain attention, such as using icebreakers, discussing current events, or sharing a video. We also provided some insights to help guide you to create effective attention gaining activities. This included knowing your audience and the topic you are teaching. So while there is no one right way to gain students' attention, your activities will be most effective if they are tailored to your student demographics and aligned with the learning outcomes. For this reflection, I want you to think about one of the learning activities you used to gain the students' attention that went well. A good indication that your activity worked well is that the students engaged with the activity and subsequently participated during the presentation. Did you tailor that activity to your students? Was the activity aligned with the learning outcomes? What behaviors did you notice from your students that indicated that they were engaged with their learning? Now I want you to think about an activity that did not go as well as you had hoped. Perhaps the students did not participate in the activity or maybe the students lost interest and excitement as a learning experience continued. For lack of better words, what went wrong? This can be difficult to diagnose, but let's start with the basic questions. One, was the activity geared towards your audience? If you had a difficult time getting your students to engage with the attention-gaining event, it might not have interested your target audience or maybe it did not challenge the capabilities and engage the curiosity. Students are likely to engage with an activity when they think will help them reach their educational goals. Can you alter the activity so that students can see its value to their learning? And two, was the activity aligned with the learning outcomes? If the students engaged with the attention-gaining activity but not with the rest of the learning experience, maybe the activity was not aligned with the learning outcomes. Can you alter the activity so it prepares and encourages the students to stay engaged throughout the learning event? To improve an unsuccessful attention-gaining activity, start by focusing on desired learning outcome. By focusing on the learning outcome first, you will create an activity that will naturally carry over from the attention-gaining step to content delivery, performance, and feedback events. Next, focus on your target audience. Understanding your target audience will help you alter the activity to meet your students educational goals and challenge their curiosity. We challenge our students' curiosity by providing activities that are intrinsically rewarding, have clear goals, allow for feedback, match the students perceived skill level, and allow them to stay in the moment. When all five of these elements are present, the students can enter a state of flow where they are completely involved with the learning environment. Do attention-gaining activities take our students into an immediate state of flow? Not necessarily, but as the first event of learning, this is the first place we can plant those seeds. The beauty of incorporating flow theory into Gong Ye's Nine Events of Learning is that we can discern how to design learning events that can help the students enter a state of flow by answering our two fundamental questions. First, is the activity aligned with learning outcomes? Remember, this is where we want to start when we design our learning activities. In terms of flow theory, we align our activities to the learning outcomes. We'll have clear goals that will allow for feedback. These two seeds will provide intrinsic motivation for many students, particularly if you're teaching adults. Second, is the activity geared towards your audience? When we tailor our instruction design to our student demographics, we plant more seeds from flow theory. The students should see the value of the activity and accept the challenge to engage. These seeds strengthen intrinsic motivation, match the students perceived skill level, and allow them to stay in the moment during the learning process. Well, that is it for this episode. I hope this reflection helped you identify ways to improve your attention-gaining activities and expand your vision on how to engage our students. For a quick primer on integrating flow theory into your classroom, check out John Spencer's article, Five Ways to Boost Student Engagement with Flow Theory, on his website at johnspencerauthor.com. As always, if you need help, contact your instructor, supervisor, or a training specialist. I am Casey Jacobson, and you have been listening to the Evening Sparrow podcast. Now, let's go help some people learn.