In opposition to the law of physics, time can stand still. Just recall your last encounter with a long-winded speaker who delivered a lecture in a boring monotone. These encounters prove an important point – intelligent beings require cognitive and sensory variety to actively assimilate ideas and retain new knowledge.

The principle of instructional variety applies to your teaching methods, learning activities and instructional materials. By varying these elements you can ultimately affect learners’ time on task, which in turn, maximizes adult learning outcomes. Compressed format courses offered by Central Michigan University in its off-campus locations challenge students to maintain attention for extended periods of time, frequently after a long day at work. Prioritizing instructional variety in the classroom can combat student fatigue and have longstanding effects on students’ capacity for active learning, motivation to stay focused and productive engagement in course content.

Maximizing Learning, a new resource for CEL faculty, suggests ideas for introducing variety in its many forms – from instructional techniques, assignments, and evaluations to the way we dynamically respond to students. You can, for example, introduce greater instructional variety by making an effort to incorporate it in your class session plans. Alternatively, you can apply instructional variety to enliven the segue from one lecture topic to another or reduce signs of student fatigue.

Borich (1989) sub-divided instructional variety into six dimensions:

1. Attention-Getting Devices
2. Displays of Enthusiasm
3. Varied Activities and Instructional Techniques
4. Varied Rewards and Reinforcers
5. Mixed Application of Probes and Questions
6. Incorporation of Student Ideas.

Attention-Getting Devices
This dimension of instructional variety is probably the most familiar to instructors – the introduction of photographs, audio/ videotapes, or other shifts in media, like relevant demonstrations, problems or experiments. These devices are very valuable for punctuating the learning environment with interesting sensory shifts and changes, but these are not the only means by which instructors can gain their students’ attention. Delivering a puzzling question in a chat room or pausing in silence to reflect on an interesting visual in a face-to-face setting can have dramatic effects on students’ sensory and cognitive receptivity to a new topic or idea.

For those instructors teaching in-class, variations in voice, visual contact and gesture can help capture student’s attention and physically signal changes from one key subject or perspective to another. Faculty teaching online can provide shifts in media – from text to photographs to streaming media – to help students readjust their focus on essential content. Online faculty can also use online communications like e-mail, chat rooms or video capture technology to provide a virtual classroom environment offering more informal teacher-student communication.

Irrespective of the learning environment, the key to making attention-getting devices effective is to use them in their proper context – as a means of allowing students to intellectually process essential material, either from a renewed perspective or via several meaningful applications.

Displays of Enthusiasm
Like attention-getting devices, displays of enthusiasm for the topic can have important effects on your students’ receptivity. Energetic discourse, vivid metaphors and novel applications of content can energize the learning environment irrespective of format. In face-to-face classrooms, try applying several devices – eye contact, inflection and shifts in movement to convey your interest in the courses you teach.

Instructor enthusiasm is a hallmark of best teaching practices and a relatively simple way to prepare students for learning. Though instructors can’t necessarily maintain students’ heightened awareness for long periods, research suggests that short-term feelings of positive excitement and tension provide a valuable precondition for effective learning (Borich, 1989).

Varied Activities and Instructional Techniques
We’re all familiar with the necessity to vary our daily activities to stay on task and effective in our work. Who would choose to perform a day-long arduous task without any cognitive or physical breaks?

Research suggests that a variety of different activities and instructional techniques are needed for effective student learning, especially in compressed courses. Class session plans providing role playing, independent work, cooperative learning, lecture, practice sessions, question/ discussion periods and field trips or similar combinations of activities, help students to assimilate content. To position adults as more active participants in their own learning, try small group exercises, large group discussion, practice sessions and conversations with invited speakers.

Variations in instructional techniques help to achieve another purpose: accommodation of different learning styles. Whereas lecturing works best for students with receptive, reflective, abstract, analytic and linear learning styles, more interactive techniques (structured discussions, group exercises) will better accommodate students with experiential, non-linear, concrete and application-oriented learning styles (Smith, 1997).

The key to making this source of variation effective is using your course learning objectives as a guide. Recall that a given learning objective can be reinforced by several different learning activities relevant to students’ required knowledge and skills.

Varied Rewards and Reinforcers
Everyone enjoys recognition of effort and hard work, and as instructors, most of us are well aware of the motivating aspects of praise. The trick is in finding the best ways to reinforce effective learning – whether efforts are focused on individuals or the class as a whole.

Finding the best student reinforcers takes some experimentation and instructor willingness to try new techniques. Instead of the standard – "That’s correct!" – you may want to try using a students’ bright perception as a launching point for a new topic, inviting other classmates to comment on the value of a student’s contribution, or encouraging student achievement by providing special projects or extra credit. Try to respond flexibly to student interests and preferences to find meaningful ways to reward effort.

Mixed Application of Probes and Questions
Anyone who has engaged in a pleasant, but predominantly one-sided discussion can attest to the comforting aspects of a good monologue. Just sit there and occasionally shake your head knowingly … until someone asks you a question and you realize you haven’t been following the speaker!

Few devices have a domino effect on student attention like a well-timed question. Beyond keeping students attendant to learning, questions help students to modify their thinking, particularly when accompanied by instructor probes of incomplete or insufficient answers. Probes are inquisitive statements offered in response to student answers that motivate deeper reflection on the topic.

The art of asking good questions extends to content questions and process-oriented questions that cover all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, from the most simple behaviors to the most complex: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation (Bloom, 1956). To reinforce rules and facts, instructors should concentrate on convergent questions which have just one correct answer. Divergent questions, having many correct replies, require higher levels of thinking and are best for facilitating students’ problem-solving skills (Gronlud, 1985). Research suggests that repetitive bouts of appropriate questions and clarifying probes help students to focus and modify their thinking.

Incorporation of Student Ideas
Divergent questions – those having many correct answers – are a particularly useful way to highlight the unique knowledge, experience and abilities of your students as integral elements of the learning experience. Use course objectives and class session plans as a framework for drawing connections between students’ backgrounds and course content. Demonstrate your respect for student contributions by elaborating on significant points and illustrating connections between your students’ perceptions and predominant course goals.

By incorporating students’ ideas in class discussions you’ll be modeling the process students must undertake to construct personal meaning from course content. You’ll also be demonstrating how knowledge learned in class can be applied to situations, problems and issues outside the classroom.

So as you begin a new semester, incorporate more variety in your course outline, class session plans and learning activities. Look in your Maximizing Learning booklet for ideas and inspiration for more ways to capitalize on your unique ability to maximize adult learning.

Copies of Maximizing Learning are available at your regional center or online at www.cel.cmich.edu/cral/. You may also request them by e-mailing Dr. Lana Ivanitskaya at cral@cmich.edu or calling (800) 950-1144, x2534.

References
Borich, G. D. (August, 1989). Air Force Instructor Evaluation Enhancement: Effective Teaching Behaviors and Assessment Procedures. Number ADA 212 766/0 filed with the report literature.

Bloom, B. S. (Ed.) (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals by a Committee of College And University Examiners. New York, NY: Longmans, Green.

Gronlund, N. E. (1985). Stating Objectives for Classroom Instruction (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan.

Smith, K. L. (1997). Preparing Faculty for Instructional Technology: From Education to Development to Creative Independence. CAUSE/EFFECT, 20(3), 36-44, 48.