Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction - Discussion #4

In order to optimize learning, Robert Gagne proposed 9 events that should be included in every instructional event.  This week we'll be exploring how to include the 9 events of instruction in your instructional design project.

To REPLY to the question or to another participant's post, just hit the REPLY Button under the question or post.

39 comments:

  1. Step 3 in Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction is stimulating prior knowledge. Describe a course you've taken or a program you've attended where this was done well. Tell us about what the instructor(s) did to bring forth your prior knowledge (and/or experiences) related to the subject matter. Why do you think this step is important and how does it contribute to learning?

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  2. Step 1 in Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction is gaining attention. Describe a course you've taken or a program you've attended where this was done well. Tell us what the instructor(s) did to gain your attention. Why do you think this initial step is important and how does it contribute to learning?

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  3. According to Robert Gagne, the teacher should ideally include 9 distinct events during every instructional activity (or unit). Thinking back on the courses you've taken in pharmacy school, which event to you think was most often neglected or outright missing? Do you think this led to poorer learning outcomes? If so, why? If not, why not? Feel free to use your knowledge of educational theories to support your conclusions.

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  4. I think one event that is frequently neglected is Step 9 (enhance retention and transfer). I can remember attending lectures in pharmacy school and feeling unsure of what the main point of the lecture was, wondering about practical application of the content, and questioning what aspects of the lecture were most important. I think the educator neglecting to take the time to complete this final step could lead to poorer learning outcomes. As learners, we often learn better with context and clarity. The whole point of teaching the content is to allow learners to be able to apply what they have learned in practice and retain the most relevant information. This final step would help solidify the concept and improve retention of information in the learner's memory.

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  5. During my undergraduate years I took a course called Constitutional
    Law, a class based around international justice and maintaining judicial independence.
    The professor showed us a video of a man in Guatemala who was labeled as an
    enemy of the state and imprisoned and tortured for years, but because the court
    system had little to no power no decisions they made in his favor made a
    difference. After showing the video the class met at a local courthouse and was
    asked to envision being a judge making just rulings that would mean nothing or
    to be on trial knowing the courts could not do anything. I think it’s about
    creating an environment which allows one to envision themselves in the situation the course is designed for. Grabbing the attention of the class by
    incorporating a personalized element is necessary because it’s the first step
    to ensuring a class will want to listen. It’s more difficult to gain the
    attention of learners later on so there is some utility to ensuring learners
    are engaged early on so that the teacher is not struggling as much to get
    learners excited early on.

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  6. Looking back, I've noticed that the step that's most often neglected is recall of information. Often times, instructors delve into the lecture without assessing prior knowledge. Sometimes they can get halfway through a lecture without realizing that they are using acronyms that nobody is familiar with, or they are discussing topics that are entirely new and confusing to the audience. However, I think this step is difficult in today's teaching because lecturers often have a set of slides that have been prepared prior to class. If a particular group of students is struggling with an old concept, you may not have the materials in front of you to properly explain it; hence, learning can be delayed. A way to get around this problem would be to create a short quiz to be completed prior to class to gauge understanding of previous issues. Then, a short summary of past information will be more geared toward concepts that students do not remember, or have difficulty understanding.

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  7. While most courses in pharmacy school as well as in my undergraduate education relied on building upon knowledge learned during prerequisite courses, a more recent example that comes to my mind occurred during ASHP Midyear 2013. One of the CE presentations that I attended polled the audience on what practices were currently being done at their institutions and further asked questions on answers to case questions. They then introduced guideline updates from 2013 and then re-assessed the appropriate clinical and institutional practices. This required the audience to be aware of what practice guidelines recommended as well as what the practice was at their particular institution. Then, by clarifying updated recommendations, the viewers would be able to more easily see opportunities for change in their practices to be consistent with the new guidelines.


    This step is important because it refreshes the learner's knowledge on the subject matter, makes new (and sometimes complicated) material more understandable, and requires the learner to apply the new information on the subject matter to a baseline foundation of knowledge on the topic. It is easier to expand on a knowledge base when the learner is actively involved and is drawing on their past experiences (andragogy!) rather than introducing a new concept without background knowledge.

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  8. There was one teacher in high school I had for several biology and anatomy classes who did a great job incorporating step 3 into all her lectures. At the beginning of her lectures, she included some sort of review of material previously covered in the course or from assigned readings. Various methods were used during the recall activities, including short pre-tests, asking questions to the class, showing video clips, group work, and active demonstrations. One time, after reviewing renal physiology the week prior, the class was asked to act out filtration (everyone was assigned a role such as endothelial cell, red blood cell, molecules, albumin, etc.). As a student, utilizing this step was helpful as it reviewed important concepts previously taught and provided groundwork on which to learn new information.
    Including activities to stimulate recall of prior knowledge is an important part of lectures because it provides the baseline knowledge students should have going into the lecture. It also ensures that the previous steps/events in other lectures were successful in allowing students to learn the material. If this event is included in most lectures, it reinforces the practice for students to continually review material on a regular basis rather than 2 or 3 nights before an exam. It also highlights important concepts on which future information will be built, either in the upcoming lecture or future lectures in the course.

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  9. Step 2, providing a learning objective is ineffectively presented. Multiple times I have been in pharmacy lectures where lecturers provide a slide of formal learning objectives. When I went home to re-read the objectives, at times I had no idea what it was really referring to. I do not ever recall being in a class where the students had some say in what their learning objectives were and have the lecturer tailor their lecture to what those objectives were. Most often this tends to occur at the end of the course where you are forced to recall "were the stated learning objectives met during the presentation?" I think this did lead to poorer learning outcomes because there often was too much information and without causal language or learner input of learning objectives, focus on what is important, is difficult to master. Proper audience analysis likely would have assisted the lecturers in creating learning objectives that would focus on the learner.

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  10. During a medical rounds presentation, the presenter opened the lecture with a patient case. Some questions were posed and we were told to think about it during the presentation. I believe this was another way of presenting the objectives that the learner would be able to grasp by the end of the presentation that made it applicable to practice. It was important because the case was presented like a story, was based on an actual patient case, and was easy to remember while the presentation progressed. It contributes to learning because it provides the learner with a focus for the presentation and how to apply what was learned to practice once the learner leaves the presentation.

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  11. In college, I took an English course based on "Wisdom of Mistakes and Failures" and we would begin each class with juggling. The teacher would demonstrate a new type of juggling or new aspect that we had not yet learned. We would practice for about 15 minutes, and then learn about all types of famous mistakes and failures. We were required to write papers and excerpts about famous mistakes and failures throughout the course of the class. I thought this professor had mastered the art of gaining attention!

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  12. I had a professor in an undergraduate cell biology course who always reviewed previously taught information at the beginning of class before starting to teach new information. He would review the main points of the prior lecture and then review the last few slides that he taught before to ensure that he covered all of the important information and that everyone remembered where we had left off. This was really helpful because often the students did not know what questions they had about the material until they had reviewed it later and could ask for clarification the next day. It was also helpful to orient the students to the topic and make sure that they have the necessary background knowledge that will be built upon in the coming lecture. I think have the necessary background information is crucial to learning, as you need to understand the basic foundation in order to build upon it.

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  13. During my Immunology
    course I had a professor who did a great job at grabbing the learners'
    attention. He was very animated and you could tell that he loved the material
    he was teaching and that he cared about his learners. It was not uncommon for
    him to jump on top of a table at the front of the lecture hall as a
    demonstration to the class of what an immunoglobulin looks like and to help him
    explain the different chains on the immunoglobulin molecules. Another
    demonstration I distinctly remember is his example for diapedesis. To
    illustrate this he used the large drop down screen as a divider between
    environments and had one side of the screen represent a white blood cell in the
    capillary, and then he would run behind the screen to represent the white blood
    cell leaving the capillary and traveling to the site of damage. Immunology can
    be a rather dry and complicated subject, and i think the professor's animation
    really helped the learners absorb and retain the information. Had he not
    been so animated I am not sure if I would have enjoyed this class.

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  14. I took an elective class in high school on American Sign Language. I will never forget the first day of that class. The teacher didn't say a word. She started class by doing a roll call where she put all the student's names on an overhead transparency and pointed down the list to each name and signed "who is this?" (but none of us knew what it meant at the time). We were all able to communicate through gestures and facial expressions. I think the teacher did that to show us that sign language isn't that hard. To be fluent with it sure you'd have to memorize lots of signs and practice to get really fast but any of us if dropped on a deserted island with a deaf person would be able to communicate. She actually didn't speak the entire first week of class!

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  15. This was actually a surprisingly common theme at Midyear,
    with many speakers asking what was currently being done at the attendee’s
    institutions and then asking how it compares to current guidelines and
    recommendations. Rather than taking an axe to pre-existing knowledge, this
    approach allows people to make their own connections and make it meaningful or
    relevant to their own situations. I think when it’s done in a public forum like
    Midyear there is the added bonus of people seeing others possibly as in the dark
    about a topic as themselves and creating a more open forum. In turn I think
    that allows a speaker to better connect with the learners and fill in missing
    blanks.

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  16. I think a commonly missed element is the provide feedback. For most courses in school we may have had clear learning objectives and the opportunity to discuss cases a group but then went straight to a multiple choice exam. There was no opportunity to independently demonstrate knowledge and receive useful feedback. The activity frequently jumped to assessment in the form of exams where the only feedback is a right or wrong answer. If we were lucky there would be an exam review where the answered would be discussed. I think the courses where I learned the most I had the opportunity to submit cases worked on individually or in a small group then receive feedback from an instructor prior to the exam. This allowed for weakness and misunderstandings to be identified prior to being asked to "perform" what I learned.

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  17. I agree, I really did not think about how strategic a learning objective could be until I graduated pharmacy school. Looking back, either the learning objectives were not present or they were not emphasized by the presenter during classes. The performance juxtaposition website recommended to simply your learning objectives for the audience since the technical aspects of learning objectives are really meant for the course instructors. I think it is important to have these objectives present in the first place and for the instructor to provide insight into why these learning objectives are important by using more casual language. This would also help to "gain attention". Also, it is important to have learning objectives that reflect a number of different levels of learning as defined by Bloom's Taxonomy. This may help with the application portion of the nine steps of instruction.

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  18. As Imran mentions, gaining the attention of the class is an important first step because trying to accomplish this feat later on in the process is extremely difficult. Gagne's chose this step as the first step in instruction for this same reason. Gaining the learner's attention right away causes them to become engaged in the learning process and creates an environment in which they are eager to learn more. This is truly the foundation for the remaining eight steps. While several of the steps that follow this initial challenge affect the learner on a rational level (provide a learning objective, present material, provide feedback, etc), this first step reaches the learner on a more personal level, enabling them to become inspired to participate in the learning process.

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  19. I think the Care of the Critically Ill course run by Dr. McPherson does a wonderful job at gaining attention. A majority of the classes have activities that can be shocking promote learning. A good example of this was when she had us do an activity where we folded a piece of paper into 16 squares and then listed 16 items that we hold dear to our hearts into each square. In the activity we would slowly have to rip up each of these items to signify us losing the item. At the end of the activity, most of the students would have saved their most treasured item (usually a loved one or family member) and sadly we had to rip up this as well. This activity showed us what it's like to be a critically ill patient and it gave us a glimpse at how it's like to lose that which we hold dear. By having us experience that perspective, we are able to provide better care to our patients.

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  20. Brittany - I think you identified one of the major reasons why instruction today often does not follow best practice principles - POWERPOINT. While presentation software can certainly help instructors organize information and its a useful tool (sometime), it focuses the instructor's and students' attention WAY too much on content delivery and virtually eliminates flexibility. Your suggestion is a good one (pre-session quiz) ... but it would also have the instructor focus his/her attention of what the major might need (not on the individual student). Better yet, help each student identify what they need to learn ... devise a system/program of individual self-paced instruction ... provide feedback along the way ... hold everyone accountable.

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  21. I agree that Step 9 is often missed in didactic education. Lectures within a course tend to build on one another, so it is vital that students understand early material before presenting the next lecture. Often times we were given quizzes at the end of lecture which utilized the ARS audience response system. We may have retained the information long enough to answer a basic question, but long-term retention is not typically assessed until the examination at the end of the module or the end of the semester. A better technique may be to quiz students during the proceeding class period, which somewhat coincides with his third event of instruction, stimulating recall of of prior knowledge.

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  22. My neuropharmacology professor started class each Monday with a quiz on the material covered during the previous week. While no one enjoys taking quizzes, this practice really made sure that we were keeping up on the material well in advance of the exam. He would use the questions as a way to test our recall, clarify any unclear points, and transition into the upcoming week's material. For example, early in the semester we learned the location and purpose of various receptors throughout the body. The follwoing week, we were quizzed on that material in anticipation of learning specific drugs that work at these receptors. In addition to satisfying Step 3, this practice also contributes to Step 9 and provided a clear benefit to our education.

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  23. I agree with Allison. Courses where I was either quized on material from the previous lecture or on readings related to the current lecture forced me to spend more time preparing and reviewing the material. In my opinion,this more "low stakes" quizzing produces continuous studying and stimulation of prior information versus cramming. At least for me, this helps to retain the information long term. It also allows the opportunity for stage 7/providing feedback where I can refine and correct what I learned. I can probably still tell you information from quiz questions I got wrong from my second year of pharmacy school.

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  24. During my college career I only had two classes where the educator made sure to bring forth our prior knowledge related to the subject matter. One of these classes was my psychology class, and the class was set up in such a way that each week focused on a certain topic or chapter. There would always be a quiz in the middle of the week to assess our knowledge of the material which had been presented early in the week. This helped the professor gauge our knowledge and make sure we all understood the information before moving on with the lectures. Not only did this help me retain information because I was reviewing material every night, but based on the qiuz results the professor would spend time reviewing certain topics if the majority of the class had performed poorly on those quiz questions.
    Another course where this was done was in my immunology course. We had quizzes every Friday and these quizzes could cover any material taught up to that point. So the first few weeks there wasn't much material to keep up with, but the amount of material grew and grew with each week. The course was held three days a week for two hours, so there was quite a bit of material being presented on a weekly basis. This technique forced me to consistently review all of the course material. Although it was frustrating at the time, having to review all of the course material on a weekly basis really made studying easier when it came time for the midterm and final. I definitely retained the most information from this course than I did from any other course during pharmacy school and I think it is largely due to this technique. The weekly quizzes helped the professor make sure that we understood the course material and that we would walk away from the course knowing all of the important information he wanted us to know.

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  25. In a similar vein, I had a instructor for GI in the constipation and diarrhea module. As an addition to passion for the material and caring about learners, this particular instructor also added humor constantly. For example, the introduction to the Constipation and Diarrhea module was "Okay class. Today's material is split in to two lectures. The Constipation module can be a strain and take a while. The diarrhea module flows pretty quickly."


    The instructor clearly made it a point to have some humorous remark strategically placed throughout the material. It felt almost timed to ensure that just around a dry part of the lecture, there was a jolly statement or anecdote to keep the class's attention. I think this is often underlooked as humor may not always add substantial amounts of material to learn, but it provides a way for the class to instantly relate to the instructor and material at hand which many would argue is critical to enhance learning.

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  26. During our week-long NAPLEX review as a P4, the instructor started each session with a quick fire quiz (brand-generic) and the first student with the correction answers received a stratch off. Although this is not a method of attention that is necessarily affordable for the instructor, it sure got my attention!

    Other methods used were jokes, stories, short videos---I think attention getters as entertainment are useful rather than a "pop-quiz", which gains attention but more as fear.

    Cases are good too but I believe they are only effective at a higher level where the learner has baseline knowledge of key areas to identify. I remember cases at the beginning of lectures in the first 2 years of pharmacy school, and they weren't the most useful way to gain attention. As a closing item to a lecture, I believe they can be more useful.

    Overall I do believe attention getters contribute to learning as long as they are not distracting because they make the upcoming lesson exciting and divert their attention away from surfing the web

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  27. I'm going to piggyback onto both of these statements and parrot that Step 9 is commonly missed within pharmacy school. For the most part, I feel that the majority of professors manage to gain attention, deliver material effectively, and assess performance. In terms of ensuring that the desired skill or knowledge is retained beyond the classroom (ie. in the 'real world'), it is a little more difficult and for that reason I do not fault the system.

    To use a personal example, when I was a student I could regurgitate goal blood pressures for an exam, or perform a BP check on a standardized patient quite easily. But both of those experiences are conducted within a didactic environment, when push came to shove on my first blood pressure patient at the pharmacy I worked at, I found myself second guessing myself for a short while. Upon reflection, the lack of confidence stemmed from the fact this was a real patient, not a case written onto a paper, and not a mock patient interview conducted in the lab. An actual patient does not always present the information in clear cut and dry segments students work with in lab, or use distinct terminology, or understand counseling pearls used to attain a grade by professor.

    If I were asked if this led to poor learning outcomes, I would say no. While Step 9 can be taught in a didactic environment, I think it can be equally taught in a safe-to-fail environment. I feel many learners (myself included, Go Accomodators!) almost require the learning-by-doing aspect to effectively retain material.

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  28. I really like the strategy of using a demonstration to gain attention as Dr. McPherson did in this example. I believe that it really does hit home when you can emotionally understand what it is like to experience a disease that someone else is dealing with. I have two similar experiences that really gained my attention. One was during a therapeutics course in pharmacy school on asthma. The instructor had us all breathe through a straw to feel what it was like to have a restrictive airway disease. In a more recent class/instructional activity, during critical care rounds we stopped to review ventilator settings. Although as a pharmacist, I am not as concerned with the ventilator, I had the opportunity to breathe on the ventilator on a setting that allowed me to take my own breaths and another that initiated the breath for me. I experienced great anxiety as I waited for the ventilator to breathe for me but was much more comfortable on the setting where I could initiate my own breaths. I always knew that patients would require sedation on the ventilator settings that were not physiologic, but experiencing the anxiety myself reinforced the need for proper sedation while on the ventilator.

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  29. I had an undergraduate organic chemistry professor that did the same thing. Each day right before class she would write the outline of the day's lecture on the board and the first item was a review of the previous day's material. I really had to struggle to think of a class where recall of previous knowledge was emphasized. I had no classes in Pharmacy School that did this. I feel like if I asked professors why they didn't utilize this technique I'd probably get one of two responses 1) I don't have enough time built into my lecture to review previous material or 2) That is the student's job to review previous material before each class on their own time, it's not my job.

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  30. wow that sounds like a wonderful learning experience. One that won't be forgotten!

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  31. I definitely agree with Caitlin. On the contrary though, do we need attention getters if the video is recorded to play at the learner's own time? I would think the usual ways of gaining attention such as those listed in the next question would not necessarily work if the class was pre-recorded. I think the move towards distance learning will require professors to think outside of the box on how to gain attention of their learners. I think an area neglected is gaining as well as MAINTAINING attention. With the generation of young people growing up with electronics that package information quickly and readily available as well as distractions gallor, maintaining ones attention beyond 15 minutes should be distinct event.

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  32. During a public lecture course in undergrad the professor began every class with an activity to gain our attention. She understood that lecture began a couple of hours after lunch, and that by the time we arrived to her class we would be in a post-lunch stupor. To reinvigorate our minds and gain our attention she would ask everyone to rise from their seat and participate in a series of stretching exercises. Next, to physicially prepare us for the demands of public speaking we would be asked to repeat a series of mouth/lip/tongue exercises and sounds (eg blowing rasberries or clucking like a chicken). After giggling our way through the exercises we were awake and ready to participate.

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  33. Just recently, I neglected Step 9. I was giving a presentation at a job interview and I did not state how to apply the presentation material to real life situations/practice. I got a question from an audience member about how we, as pharmacists, can apply the information...the disease state that I was discussing was mainly treated with psychotherapy, so what were going to do with this information? I had to draw upon my experiences in psychiatric pharmacy to show the information's applicability.

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  34. There was a Pharmacy Practice faculty member at my school who always played music before class started. She would play the 'Today's Hits' channel on pandora.com to captivate our attention and get us excited/alert. She was also always extremely animated when lecturing and would never read all the words on her slides when teaching. She would just provide an overview of each slide and let us read the slides word-for-word on our own when studying.

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  35. I had one of the most amazing inorganic chemistry professor who regularly demonstrated chemical reactions that produced odd smells, sparkling gummy bears, exploding balloons, colorful bubbling beakers and many other attention grabbing reactions at the beginning of his lectures. Since I am such a visual learner these demonstrations always solidified the concepts he was teaching and made it easier for me to recall information later on since I would be able to link the lecture information with a visual.

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  36. I also agree with Gloria's statement that providing a learning objective is often ineffectively presented. I would also argue that more often than not, this event is completely skipped. Most of my professors in pharmacy school followed a very similar lecture format to what Gloria mentioned, as well - title slide, followed by slide after slide of formal learning objectives. I remember frequently skipping over these, or merely glancing at them because it was too time consuming to "translate" them into something understandable and easy to relate to before the lecturer moved on. By the time I figured out what I should be learning for that lecture, it was easy to miss at least five minutes of the lecture itself! In the environment of an accelerated curriculum, having a learning objective presented in casual, easy to understand terms would have been very valuable to me as a student. I believe that having a learning objective in simplified terms makes it easier for students to benefit from Step 9 (Enhance Retention and Transfer). If students are aware of the major take-away point from the lecture, it is easier to understand where the material can be applied beyond the context of the lecture material.

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  37. One more vote for step #9 being often neglected from my classes throughout pharmacy school. There were some professors who were wonderful at making the lecture come to life by connecting it with stories from their work. This always inspired an 'Ahah!" moment for me and gave the endless words on the power-point life and meaning.

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  38. I had an infectious disease professor who began his lectures by tossing a ball up in the air and making us aware that at any point in time (back row included), this could be tossed in our direction to answer one of the active learning/poll questions throughout his lectures. He also made it a point to mention that not all of the information he was going to talk about would be verbatim in the slides; therefore it was our responsibility to pay attention to gain this information. Having this somewhat aggressive approach to gaining our attention worked, especially in a class of 65 where laptops were encouraged for note taking. It was common for me to see (as a back row member) the majority of my classmates on Facebook, online shopping, watching videos, or playing games during lectures. The lectures taught by this professor were a different story - the fact that each and every one of us could be held accountable in front of our peers seemed to grab everyone's attention. The participation and captivation he gained by the class was significantly greater than many of the other professors. The initial step of gaining attention is crucial to the learning process because it sets the tone for the entire lecture. If the audience is captivated, willing to participate, and engaged in the material, it makes sense that this scenario would be more effective for learning than an audience concerned with online shopping.

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  39. I'll throw my vote in for #9 being one of the most often neglected elements of Gagne's teaching events throughout my pharmacy school experience. There were a few professors who were wonderful and bringing their lectures to life by sharing stories from their work. This always inspired an "Ahah!' moment for me and created a connection and provided an increased value to words on the power-point.

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