Section 2: Theories and Models of Learning and Instruction.

For someone who has a goal to learn the parts of a business letter, the two learning theories in Chapter 4 that I would incorporate would be Situated Learning Theory and Cognitive Information Processing Theory.  With the Situated Learning Theory, students would be given assignments/activities to complete. Each new assignment would incorporate new features/letter parts while re-enforcing previously learned letter parts. The assignments and activities would need to be simulated as close to real business documents as possible. Once mastered, the student would be able to produce a letter in the proper format with proper letter parts and placement. With the Cognitive Information Processing Theory, stimuli would be documents for the student to complete that incorporated letter parts, starting from simple to complex. The short term memory system would be enhanced with practice of the features in a variety of related documents that would help to commit what was learned to long term memory; such as a modified block style letter with multiple addressees or a block style letter with a subject line. Through repeated practice of the different parts of a letter used in different letter styles, the student would be able to commit the parts and styles to long term memory.

Using Gagne’s Nine events published by the G. Raymond Change School of Continuing Education (http://de.ryerson.ca/portals/de/assets/resources/Gagne%27s_Nine_Events.pdf), Ihave compared and contrasted Gagne’s Nine events with the First Principles below. 

 

The steps I would follow in applying each of the First Principles to my goal of teaching the parts of a business letter, would be as follow:  Problem centered.  Discuss the parts of a letter and show how they are placed (formatted) to form a proper business letter. Explain that some parts of standard and others are used on an as needed basis.  Activation.  Basic parts of a business letter can be related to personal letters that students may have written, such as the date line, saluation, body, and closing. These parts create the foundation of the letter and a building structure for the business letter. From here, additional parts of business letters can be introduced and their placement explained. Demonstration. Use a variety of examples, such as a letter of application, collections letter, client letter, sales letter, etc.  With each example, highlight the body parts and their location within the letter. Application. Students are given a packet of letters to produce. The first letter would be simple with only the basic body parts introduced. As students progress through the packet, the letters would become more complicated, using letter parts that vary from letter to letter. These letters would be submitted for a performance evaluation and feedback provided to student. Integration. The capstone assignment would be for student to create and produce a letter of application.

As a business teacher, the whole-task approach in embraced in preparing for students for the workforce. Teaching students the parts of a letter and their proper placement within the letter needs to be taught in such a way that students can produce a proper business letter in any business setting. In order for students to become experts at producing a letter they need to know the different parts of the letter and understand when those parts may or may not be used. Complex skills will be refined as they practice producing letters with varying letter parts. At first they will be told which letter parts need to be included, but as training progresses, they will need to determine letter parts that may need to be added based on the content of the letter, i.e. Enclosure. If the Scaffolding approach was to be used, a teacher could begin by breaking a business letter down into its parts and discussing the purpose and placement of those parts. Then students could begin with producing letters that contained only the basic parts. As they became proficient with producing these basic letters, additional letter parts could be introduced and incorporated into the production of future assignments. In using the Mathemagenic method for teaching the parts of a letter and their proper placement, a teach would, again, start with a basic letter, one that contains the parts of any and all business letters. Practice producing these types of basic letters would provide the student with the recurrent constituent skills necessary to produce a letter in any business setting. Once mastered, students could be introduced to other letter parts that vary from letter to letter. Explaining to the students when and how these letter parts are used and with practice in determining whether or not these additional letter parts may or may not be needed for a particular letter, students will gain the necessary nonrecurrent constituent skills.

To motive and enhance learning of the proper format of a letter, I would do the following:

Attention
Perceptual Arousal:	For the purposes of this learning objective (proper format of a letter) we will be writing a letter of application for the job of their choice.
Inquire Arousal:	Ask around for examples of jobs that students may want to write a letter of application.
Variability:	Student input, example letters
Relevance
Goal Orientation:	Start with the basic parts of the letter (i.e., dateline, address, salutation, body, and closing).
Motive Matching:	As basic letter parts become familiar, add new letter parts for practice.
Familiarity:	Have students produce letters they might receive themselves (i.e., letters for credit, collection letters, employment letters, etc.)
Confidence
Learning Requirements:	Immediate feed-back on completed letters.
Success Opportunities:	As students learn the parts of a letter and how to format a letter, they will be able to produce a business letter in any environment.
Personal Control:	When they can produce a correctly formatted letter without an example or template.
Satisfaction
Intrinsic Reinforcement:	Let students compose and produce a letter of application for a job of their choice (real or not).
Extrinsic Rewards:	Positive feed-back on their work.
Equity:	Positive feed-back.

I feel the major benefit of engaging in design research is the repeated evaluation and feed-back of student progress at the end of each macrocycle followed by a new set of learning tasks for the next macrocycle. This approach to learning would allow for students to be evaluated regularly for task proficiency with constructive feed back on their progress. Once the evaluation is complete a new set of tasks for the next macrocycle can be designed based on what was accomplished. This would allow students to progress through the coursework in a productive way making sure the foundational learning took place before higher-level learning was introduced.