The Elements of Instruction: The Building Blocks of Lesson Design

The Elements of Instruction provides a common vocabulary and conceptual schema of teaching and learning that is fully applicable to all forms of instruction in our digital-centric era. This critical examination of educational technology’s contemporary semantics and constructs fills a major gap in the logical foundations of instruction, with special attention to the patterns of communication among facilitators, learners, and resources. The book proposes a new framework for organizing research and theory, clear concepts and definitions for its basic elements, and a new typology of teaching-learning arrangements to simplify the selection of optimal conditions for a variety of learning goals. As trends in media, technology, and methodology continue to evolve, these historically contextual, back-to-basics pedagogical tools will be invaluable to all instructional designers and educational researchers.

Michael H. Molenda is Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Instructional Systems Technology in the School of Education at Indiana University Bloomington, USA.

Deepak Prem Subramony is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Educational Technology Graduate Programs in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at Kansas State University, USA.