Should Gagne be Buried?

Don Clark has thrown down the gauntlet to IDs in his article, Gagne's Nine Dull Commandments. In this article, Clark challenges the conventional wisdom that if you ‘follow the recipe, learning will surly follow..’

After some witty banter as to how each of Gagne’s principles have fallen apart and have become irrelevant, Clark issues the challenge.. It’s time we moved on from this old and now dated theory using what we’ve learnt about the brain and the clever use of media.

As someone who believes in Gagne’s theory as a strong roadmap, but agree that it has become ‘banal’ as it has been put into practice, I have taken the challenge that a commenter posted to rewrite/rephrase Gagne’s theory to today’s modern media and learners..

Gagne’s 9 Learning Commandments?

1 Gaining attention- Challenge your learners.

2 Stating the objective

3 Stimulating recall of prior learning

4 Presenting the stimulus

5 Providing learning guidance

6 Eliciting performance

7 Providing feedback

8 Assessing performance

9 Enhancing retention and transfer to other contexts


Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, check back for the Learning2.0 version of Gange’s laws updated at mLearning World.


Also see Don Clark's tombstoning of Bloom's Taxonomy & the Kilpatrick Method.