The Magic Question for Learning and Instructional Design
Will Thalheimer focuses on the Magic Question about instruction:
I'd add that for a deliberative process like a citizens jury, experts should focus their sessions on what participants need to do to answer their task.
What do learners need to be able to do, and in what situations do they need to do those things?
While we might discount such a simple question as insignificant, the question brilliantly forces us to focus on our ultimate goals and helps us to align our learning interventions with the human learning system.
Too many of us design with a focus on topics, content, knowledge. This tendency pushes us, almost unconsciously, to create learning that is too boring, filled with too much information, and bereft of practice in realistic situations.
The Magic Question requires us to be relevant. For workplace learning, it focuses our thinking toward learners' future job situations. For education learning, it focuses our thinking toward real-world relevance of our academic topics.
I'd add that for a deliberative process like a citizens jury, experts should focus their sessions on what participants need to do to answer their task.
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