Master Training Specialist: Gagne's Nine Events

The third 'D' in ADDIE is for Develop. During the develop phase, the Instructional Designer will commence building the lesson plans, trainee guides, power points, interactive courseware, and other instructional media. One of the tools we use in building our lesson plans is Gagne's 9 events of instruction. Dr. Robert Gagne developed nine instructional events that need to be used in every training event for learning to occur. We follow these nine events when building our lesson plans. They are divided into three major portions; opening (tell the learners what you are going to tell them), delivery (tell the learners the material), and closing (tell the learners what you have told them).

Below is a description of Gagne's 9 events:

Opening (what you are going to tell them):

1. Gain Attention- The instructor has to stimulate the learner's receptors and gain their attention in order to learning to occur. Instructors gain learner's attention through a strong and motivating General Introduction and Intense Personal Interest. During this event the instructor checks the 'law of readiness,' he ensures that the learners are ready to learn.

2. Inform learners of objectives- This creates the level of expectation for learning. The learners have to know what is expected of them through the learning process. They need to know what they will be assessed on and what is expected of them. READ the objectives to the learners!

3. Stimulate recall of prior learning- Retrieval and activation of short term memory. New learning is best retained when built on prior learning; therefore, instructors need to start new lessons with a brief review of previous relevant material.

Delivery (tell them):

4. Present the content- Present the material from the lesson plan. The content may be presented via Power Point, interactive courseware, or Instructor Led.

5. Provide "learning guidance"- Add information to the learning to help encode it into the student's long term memory. Adding a lesson's learned, a sea story, mnemonics, job aids or other memory tools that helps to embed the material into the learner's long term memory.

6. Elicit Performance- Provide an opportunity for learners to apply the material they have learned. This may not be limited to just practical performance, it may also be in the form of communications with other students, instructors and / or peers. It may be a role play exercise or a learning game. Remember that perfect practice makes perfect, award correct performance and correct poor performance. All of the exercises should reflect real world situations and should be safe!

Closing (tell them what you told them):

7. Provide Feedback- Reinforce and assess the correct performance. Instructors will always provide proper feedback to the learners so that correct actions are known and improper actions are corrected. This feedback may be as simple using an effect word when answering a question. This phase occurs throughout the lesson!

8. Assess performance- Retrieve and reinforce the content for evaluation. Learners will be assessed IAW approved enabling objectives.

9. Enhance performance and transfer to job- Now it is time to spend some 'quality' time reflecting on what has been learned and practiced and discuss how to transfer it to the job site. Ask learners to share any experiences they had in the past that they could have applied this new knowledge.

These 9 events are time tested to aid student retention and transfer of learning.