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| Unit 5.5 includes The Instruction Cube (TIC): A Paradigm to Analyze the Efficiency of Instruction (PAEI) Lecture Notes; Dimension 1: Lesson Theme – Process, Content or Random Chance; Dimension 2: Instruction Focus – Descriptions of, Discussions about, or Random Activities; Dimension 3: Planned Results – Managed Risks of Failure, No Attention to Risks, or Random Chances of Risks; Eight Options for Instruction; Three TIC Strategies for Instruction; Calculating the Efficiency of Instruction with TIC; TIC Checklist to Plan Instruction; Implications of TIC; Analysts of Instruction; Instructor as Self-Analyst of Instruction; Electronic Technology as Analyst of Instruction; Discussion of TIC ETAP; and Unit 5.5: Assessment.
EduClassics.com describes behavior patterns people use to learn and uses of these descriptions to increase contributions of Classic Education in the 21st Century. This page describes an application of those patterns to lesson planning and instruction. Teaching as Instruction: a. Managing the learning of others. b. Managing the risk of failure by novices to meet learning criterion of a lesson. c. Behavioral processes used to change behavior patterns of learners. d. Sequences of descriptions and discussions intended to increase the rate of adoption, adaptation, maintenance, and extension of a behavior pattern by novices. e. An effort to support learners’ survival. Efficiency of Instruction: a. The rate that instruction changes behavior patterns to those used by the most informed people in a society. b. Lessons requiring fewer trials-and-errors and fewer learner’s resources such as time, effort, and energy to reach a learning criterion. c. The power, skill of instruction to reduce waste and other risks of failure a learner encounters in a lesson. Analyze Efficiency of Teaching: a. Examining the management of learning. b. Analyzing behavior patterns of learning during a lesson and comparing them against each other and against external criteria in order to calculate the relative waste and risks of failure of learners to meet criterion. c. A way to assess costs in time, effort, and tangibles a learner pays for completing a lesson. d. A way to assess the adequacy of instruction and instructional material to yield expected results. The Instruction Cube (TIC): A Paradigm to Analyze the Efficiency of Instruction (PAEI): a. An infrastructure of social patterns of learners that instructors may use to limit trial-and-error of learners. b. Empirical experimental behavioral science research descriptions of efficient instruction. c. A framework of behavioral science descriptions and relationships among behavior patterns people use to instruct. d. A framework to assess the extent to which lessons promptly increase learning dramatically. |
The Instruction Cube (TIC): A Learners’ 3D View of Instruction
Overview
The Instruction Cube (TIC) offers a learners’ view of a lesson. TIC displays three sets of interacting choices teachers make to plan and instruct a lesson. Teachers choose either to address or not to address learners’ primary question: “What do I have to do?”
Behavioral scientists have described three sets of essential behavior patterns learners use during a lesson in order to find answers to their question. They use trials-and-errors with each of these patterns in order to search for the answer intended for the lesson.
Lesson planners and instructors either do or do not address these patterns. For learning to occur, instruction answers the learners’ question. Instruction that increases rates of learning also uses these essentials.
It follows that a lesson was not offered when learning does not result, regardless of what an instructor, learner, or software package has done during their interactions with each other.
Education software and other media developers intending to increase learning serve as lesson planners and instructors.
The Three Dimensions of TIC
The three dimensions of The Instruction Cube (TIC) consist of the three sets of essential behavior patterns that learners use to complete a lesson successfully. Each dimension also includes an optional set of instructional choices that do not give priority to social patterns learners use. Each set of each dimension consists of a spreadsheet of descriptions of how people do or do not learn.
TIC results from the intersection of rows and columns from these spreadsheets.
Insert
The TIC Figure
about here
Dimension 1: Theme of the Lesson.
Instructors decide whether to give priority (1a) to the process of instruction, (1b) to the content of the lesson, or (1c) to leave the theme of the lesson to emerge through random chance. Process describes what a learner must do first, second, etc. to meet criterion. Content describes the vocabulary and the logic for relating that vocabulary to meet lesson criterion. Random chance refers to leaving unplanned activities assigned the name of a lesson, as in “What would you like to learn today?”
Dimension 2: Focus of the Lesson.
Instructors decide whether give to priority (2a) to description of the content, (2b) to discussion about the lesson, or (2c) to leave the focus of the lesson to random chance. Descriptions of a lesson enumerate and emphasize how learners meet criterion. Discussions about a lesson include explanations, opinions, and reasons for the criterion and steps to meet it. Random chance refers to assigning the name of lesson to social activities that emerge between teachers and students.
Dimension 3: Results of the Lesson.
Instructors decide whether to give priority (3a) to reducing calculated risks of the lesson failing to increase measured learning, (3b) to the use of teacher-judgment of the success of a lesson, or (3c) to leave to random chance results which may or may not occur. Descriptions of risks of failure begin with counting and recording something during a lesson and comparing that record with a standard for no risk of failure. Teacher judgment of the success of a lesson consists of no tangible record of learners meeting criterion or why they did not meet it. Random chance of results refers to conducting lessons without identifying or assessing results.
The TIC Figure also illustrates eight generic sets of choices for instruction that result from these intersections. Choices made by lesson planners and instructors can result in instruction ranging from learner-initiated trials-and-errors to prescribed direct instruction and direct learning.
These choices influence the efficiency of learning. Observers can use the eight sets of choices to track how closely each lesson plan and its instruction does or does not result in learners meeting a learning criterion.
The Nine Choices for Instruction these Dimensions Yield
Instruction Choice 1: Dimension 1a + Dimension 2a + Dimension 3a
Instruction Choice 2: Dimension 1a + Dimension 2b + Dimension 3a
Instruction Choice 3: Dimension 1a + Dimension 2a + Dimension 3b
Instruction Choice 4: Dimension 1a + Dimension 2b + Dimension 3b
Instruction Choice 5: Dimension 1b + Dimension 2a + Dimension 3a
Instruction Choice 6: Dimension 1b + Dimension 2b + Dimension 3a
Instruction Choice 7: Dimension 1b + Dimension 2a + Dimension 3b
Instruction Choice 8: Dimension 1b + Dimension 2b + Dimension 3b
Choices made by lesson planners and instructors can result in instruction ranging from learner-initiated trials-and-errors to prescribed direct instruction and direct learning. These choices influence the efficiency of learning.
Efficient Instruction
Efficient instruction follows the shortest path through these choices that results in learners meeting the criterion for a lesson. The most efficient instruction reduces the number of trials-and-errors of learners to meet the learning criterion of each lesson. These ways are consistent with descriptions of behavior patterns people use to learn.
The more efficient the instruction, the lower the likelihood a student will fail to meet lesson criterion. To calculate this likelihood (Dimension 3), multiply the probability of Dimension 1 by the probability of Dimension 2.
Three Strategies for Instruction
Strategies for instruction use the four orders of learning (see aLEAP) to increase learning.
Instructors, including learning material developers, have three generic strategies for offering a lesson. They may build a lesson based on ways people learn (Strategy 1). They may add prompts people use to learn to a lesson built of content (Strategy 2). They may mix features of Strategies 1 and 2 (Strategy 3).
In each strategy, instructors choose ways for a lesson to answer learners’ question, “What do I do?” (a process plus content) in order for a learner to meet a lesson-defined outcome (a result referred to as ‘what’s learned’).
The more precisely instruction fits experimental behavioral and social science research based principles people use to learn, the more likely learners will meet a lesson criterion rather than a Bell Curve distribution of results.
Instruction Strategy 1: Begin with How People Learn then Add Content.
Principle of how people learn: Through trials-and-errors.
Principle of something learned: Repeat one or more behavior patterns n times without error in each set of 10 presentations.
Lesson: Vocabulary of chemical mixtures and compounds: All compounds are mixtures, but all mixtures are not compounds. Class will repeat in choral unison speech and individual responses on-teacher-demand in order to reduce the number of errors to zero with these words.
Duration of instruction: Counted by trial blocks; usually 60 to 90 seconds.
Archtype of Lesson: How to assemble a bicycle coaster break without error (Gold, 1968).
Instruction Strategy 2: Begin with Content, then Add Prompts People Use to Learn Content.
Principle of how people learn: Respond to reduncant cues or prompts.
Principle of something learned: Identifies definitions for two vocabulary words.
Lesson: Distinguish between chemical mixtures and chemical compounds. Whisper, “All compounds are mixtures.” Shout, “All mixtures are not compounds.”
Principle of something learned: in choral unison speech and individual responses
Duration of instruction: Counted by trial block or less than clock time assigned for class period.
Archtype of Lesson: How to conduct choral singing.
Instruction Strategy 3: Repeat the Lesson Offered Last Time.
Principle of how people learn: None identified or addressed intentionally.
Principle of something learned: Undefined criterion for demonstrating something learned.
Lesson: Improvisation and presentation based on one or two word lesson plan-book entry with coincidental and incidential use of principles of learning.
Duration of instruction: Less than the clock time assigned for the class.
Archtype of Lesson: How to roll the dice in a game of craps. Conventional lesson planning and instruction.
Implications of TIC
TIC, as an acronym and the first syllable of Tic-Tock of a clock, serves as an implicit reminder that learners have only n seconds of instruction. Thus, the volume of learning from instruction is time-bound by that n. More efficient instruction increases the volume of learning in a given block of time.
It serves as a tool to plan, analyze, and calculate how a lesson includes learner behavior patterns that result in efficient learning. The sooner learners identify these patterns and their relationships to the content of the lesson, the more likely they will meet criterion for learning the lesson.
It also serves as a model to guide development of software intended to increase learning and learning efficiency.
It guides the refinement of lessons when instructors plan to increase learners’ efficiency promptly and directly.
Observers may use TIC to monitor and to forecast the risk of failure that a lesson offers learners.
Related Resources
- The Instruction Cube (TIC): A Paradigm to Analyze the Efficiency of Instruction (PAEI)
- Links to Electronic Media Related to TIC PAEI
- Reading Guides
- Worksheets
Related Reading
Lasted Edited: April 10, 2016