Since I’m trying to point my feet that direction, I’ve recently started following more of the conversation on instructional design. Over the weekend, I read a tweet where the person suggested you had to include three examples or your teaching effort was nothing more than a presentation.
Students have found both Dead Bunny’s blog and videos helpful, and both usually are built around the actual math skill and maybe one example to illustrate use. When I’m face to face with a student, I’ll show them how to do the skill and then guide them as they do their own work. Most of my students wouldn’t even have the patience to let me get through multiple examples if they already understand what I’ve asked them to do.
Even when I was doing my teacher prep, none of my teachers suggested that you needed a specific number of examples to help someone understand. During my museum education career, none of my managers ever returned a lesson plan to me for a rewrite if it didn’t have the right number of examples.
I have to wonder where this magical number came from, because I’ve always been allowed to teach or design with just enough examples to get the point across without becoming tedious or disengaging. Is this really a rule of thumb for instructional design?
