A Focus on Robert Gagné’s Instructional Theories: Application to Teaching Audio Engineering

Abstract

The learning theories of Robert M. Gagne have made a lasting impression on the field of education, especially in terms of efforts in curriculum design. His contributions are now widely recognized and have been integrated into the education discipline's broad conception of ideas important to learning and instruction in several fields including the military, instructional design, the medical field, engineering, and leadership (Smith and Ragan 1996). Gagne's major theories include his taxonomy of learning outcomes, conditions of learning, and his nine events of instruction. These theories are known more as instructional theories, as traditional learning theory is more behaviorist in nature. It is the job of instructional theory to elicit a set of rules on how changes in human performance come about. Gagne's instructional theories seek to arrange conditions of learning to provide for specific performance outcomes, which makes them more related to the field of curriculum design (see Figure 1) (Driscoll 2000). This paper will apply Gagne's instructional theories, as well as other related theories, to a simple series of steps in teaching audio engineering in the college classroom.