OVERVIEW

One way to think about the fundamental elements of instructional design is to divide them into lessons and tests. Included in the first element (lessons) are two activities called demonstrations and exercises. The demonstration explains how to do something; an exercise lets you practice doing it. They are taken together because their fundamental purpose is instruction, to teach something. Tests, on the other hand, are given to find out whether you have learned.

One way to tell the difference between an exercise and a test is to consider the kind of feedback they offer. Because tests are designed to find out whether a person has learned something, their feedback is more generalized. In some cases they don t offer any feedback at all other than a final grade. Their purpose is to evaluate whether or not you have learned and then to allow you to progress. Exercises, on the other hand, are all about feedback because their purpose is to help you learn.

The truth is that although demos, exercises, and tests are all important, the function we will spend most of the time considering is the exercise. In the next chapter and beyond we will consider how to construct exercises that match the goals of the lesson and to use interactive media to make exercises most effective.

But before we get into that level of detail, let s focus...