lifeandlearning

Today I want to talk about one of my favourite tools. Something that I came across more than a decade ago. Something equally true for a sage on stage teacher as it is for a behind the scenes instructional designer. Something so simple yet so profound. I am talking about Merrill’s first principles of instruction. David Merrill developed Merrill’s first principles and published them in an article back in 2002. The original article can be found here. These are various principles that are aimed at integrating and embedding the learning. Merrill's first principles of instruction Activate – In simple terms this principle is about linking the information presented to a learner to their pre-existing knowledge and experiences. For example, if the subject matter is about budgeting than asking the learner to think about their monthly budget would activate their knowledge and experience about budgeting in general. Then these general experiences and kno