
How Do I Make Effective Instructional Materials? 5 Awesome Ways.
- 1. Promote innovation. Among the best avenues in education is the integration of technology to enhance how we teach. Integrating technology in the ...
- 2. Stimulate creativity.
- 3. Enrich lesson structure.
- 4. Tailor support to fit the student’s level of understanding.
- 5. Promote higher-order thinking skills of students.
- Begin At The End. ...
- Know Your Audience. ...
- Develop a Game Plan. ...
- Find or Create the Instructional Materials. ...
- Evaluate Your Learners. ...
- Evaluate Your Instruction.
What are the best tips for developing instructional materials?
The best approach to developing instructional materials is to start by examining the training plan and available resources. Depending on the learning objectives and length of the training program, training materials may include workbooks, training manuals, computer-based lessons and audio-visual aids.
What are instructional materials?
Instructional materials are the tools used in educational lessons, which includes active learning and assessment. Basically, any resource a teacher uses to help him teach his students is an instructional material.
How to create effective learning material?
Creating effective learning material starts with instructional design. It has become a concept that is equally popular in both the academic and professional fields.
How do I create instructional materials for students on an IEP?
For students on an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or any other kind of learning plan, be sure to consider each student's level of ability when creating instructional materials. For some, you may have to create a completely different text or handout. For others, you may have to merely cut out certain types of tasks.

How can you develop effective instructional materials?
To get started, you can check out the following tips.Subject Matter Experts Should Simply Consult and Not Write Instructional Materials. ... Speak Directly To The Audience. ... Use Vivid Language. ... Tell Engaging Stories. ... Use The Active Voice. ... Edit and Proofread Carefully. ... Be Aware of What Your Audience Does and Doesn't Know.More items...•
Why is there a need to develop an instructional materials?
Instructional materials are essential since they help the teacher and learners avoid overemphasis on recitation and rote learning that can easily dominate a lesson. Resource materials allow learners to have practical experiences which help them to develop skills and concepts and to work in a variety of ways.
How do you develop simple instructional materials that fits for your subject?
6 Steps for Better Instructional DesignBegin At The End. ... Know Your Audience. ... Develop a Game Plan. ... Find or Create the Instructional Materials. ... Evaluate Your Learners. ... Evaluate Your Instruction.
What is development in instructional materials?
The Instructional Materials Development (IMD) program includes four components: Learning Progressions -- supports the creation of instructional frameworks centered on learning progressions in science and technology education and the development of associated teacher resources and models for professional development.
What is the purpose of support instructional materials in the classroom?
Instructional materials provide the core information that students will experience, learn, and apply during a course. They hold the power to either engage or demotivate students.
What are the benefits of having a well prepared instructional materials especially in grade school?
Instructional materials are essential tools in learning every subject in the school curriculum. They allow the students to interact with words, symbols and ideas in ways that develop their abilities in reading, listening, solving, viewing, thinking, speaking, writing, using media and technology.
How important is learning materials in facilitating learning?
Since the use of learning tools promotes active learning, the students will acquire skills to analyse, synthesise and apply the material. It will help develop their logical reasoning and creative thinking because the teachers are allowing them to have a more active role in the learning process.
What are instructional materials, anyway?
Instructional materials are various resources that enhance learners’ experiences in their learning environment (Awolaju, 2016), be it face-to-face or online settings. Examples include textbooks, pre-recorded lectures, videos, images, posters, job aids, and charts.
Why are effective instructional materials important?
In any learning environment, effective instructional materials help promote learners’ success (Ajoke, 2017). In some situations, like asynchronous online programs, these materials may be the main component available to learners.
How can you write effective instructional materials?
To maximize a learner’s experience, a variety of instructional materials should be included, such as textbooks, videos, images, graphic organizers, charts, and supplementary readings. There are also a few factors to be taken into consideration when writing instructional materials.
About the Writer
Georgette is a candidate for her Master of Arts in Education with Emphasis in Educational Technology and Instructional Design from the University of Balamand. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Education. Georgette currently focuses on developing learning experiences for K-12 school learners.
Upload your Instructional Materials to Canvas
and any other documents and content files that equip your students and help them learn the information, concepts, processes, terminology, and applications in your course.
Remote Lectures
Teaching a remote course provides a couple of avenues for instruction. If you choose to continue lecturing at your regular scheduled day and time (synchronously), you can invite students to attend virtually via Zoom, the campus-supported video conferencing tool.
Record Shorter, Focused Videos for Asynchronous Lectures
When lecturing in a physical classroom, you have the opportunity to build in natural check-in points with your class or incorporate pauses to process, reflect, and discuss/practice. Using the same model for remote asynchronous lectures, organize your lecture into smaller teaching points, concepts, and units of information.
Tips for Synchronous Lectures
If real-time synchronous lectures are necessary to facilitate interaction, demonstrate specific processes, and develop skills that can only be done in real-time, the strategies below will help you prepare, organize, and focus on delivering and facilitating an effective synchronous lecture.
What is training material?
Training materials are a necessary part of any program or activity that involves knowledge acquisition and retention. The best approach to developing instructional materials is to start by examining the training plan and available resources.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of training materials?
Evaluate the effectiveness of the training materials by asking training program participants to share their opinions. Training material feedback forms could contain questions about organization, clarity, variety and usefulness, and may be used to revise and improve the materials.
What should I learn in a trainer course?
Do a 'Train the Trainer' course for tips, but beware of any that don't accentuate the need for the development of personal style! You should get the following topics: outline principles, role of a trainer, tools of the trade, behavioral types, course specification and programming, multi-intelligence questionnaire, speech making, feedback design, etc.
How to assess students in a training workbook?
When creating a training workbook, knowledge may be assessed through the use of quizzes.
How to approach a subject?
Approach the subject with the assumption that the end user knows nothing about the topic. It is best to provide too much information rather than not enough. Actual photographs or screen shots of each step are quite helpful. Your goal should be to provide all detail needed to accomplish the stated task.
What is training plan?
Develop a training plan. A plan is an overview or outline of how training will be approached. It typically includes the training program schedule, key learning objectives and a list of the available resources. Estimate how much time to spend on each learning objective.
What is instructional material?
Instructional materials are the tools used in educational lessons, which includes active learning and assessment. Basically, any resource a teacher uses to help him teach his students is an instructional material. There are many types of instructional materials, but let's look at some of the most common ones. 6:47.
Why do teachers need to evaluate instructional materials?
Every teacher needs to evaluate all instructional materials to make sure that they are related to the learning objective, that they support learning with limited distractions, and that they provide variety and choice. Look for these things when evaluating your instructional materials in your classroom.
How to Teach So That Students Will Learn?
Before teaching a class, a teacher should determine what specific outcomes he/she wants, i.e. what skills and knowledge he/she wants the students to master. These skills vary depending on the district's scope and sequence, curriculum guide, or Common Core standards specific to subject and grade level.
What are traditional resources?
Traditional Resources: Traditional resources are any textbooks or workbooks that can be used within a classroom setting to explain new concepts. Graphic Organizers: Graphic organizers are any form of visual representation of information, such as graphs, diagrams and charts.
What is the role of a teacher in the classroom?
Next comes the decision about resource materials (literature, textbooks, films, school trips, YouTube segments, etc.) to use as vehicles to teach the age and level-appropriate skills; and instructional modality (whole-class instruction, small-group, presentations, research, etc.) The teacher is a facilitator who introduces the lesson by providing a rationale and contextualizing the content to be taught.
How to incorporate active learning into a classroom?
In fact, having students create their own graphic organizers can be a great way to incorporate active learning. For instance, you can have students read a short story or even an informational article and then create their own visual representation of the information. This pushes students to internalize and apply the information, which requires more thought than simple recall.
Why is it important to evaluate traditional resources?
To evaluate these traditional resources, the most important aspect is to make sure you choose material within the resource that appropriately relates to your learning objective. Most textbooks and workbooks have already been designed to align with certain educational standards and are therefore very reliable in regards to addressing classroom goals. Still, it is important to be sure to choose material within the textbooks that matches your specific learning objective .
What is Instructional Design?
Instructional design refers to the process used to create instructional material.
How to identify learning goals and instructional problems?
Identify learning goals and instructional problems or obstacles that may hinder them. Research the audience to identify learner’s characteristics that you can use to create more relevant course material. Identify the relevant subject content and analyze tasks to see whether they align with the defined goals.
What is the purpose of developing evaluation instruments?
Develop evaluation instruments to evaluate the progress of the learners towards achieving the objectives
What are the phases of learning?
According to this instructional design model, there are four phases of learning; Activation: Learning material should activate the knowledge the learner already has on the subject matter. This helps them use it as a foundation to digest new knowledge.
What should learners be encouraged to do?
Integration: Learners should be encouraged to integrate new knowledge into their life and use it to solve problems.
How to elicit performance?
Elicit performance by helping them internalize new knowledge through activities that encourage them to recall and use that knowledge.
What is the Addie process?
ADDIE is a five-stage process that provides guidelines to create effective training material. It stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. Analyze: In this step, the situation is analyzed to understand the goals and objectives for the learning material, requirements, needs, skills and knowledge of the learners.
How to create instructional materials?
1. Begin At The End. Begin by pinpointing, as precisely as possible, what it is that the learner will know and be able to do when the instruction is completed.
How to develop instructional strategies?
Develop instructional strategies based on your analysis of both the learners and the course content. This can be a fairly lengthy step in the process because it is so open-ended and diverse. Very different strategies would be used to teach a psychomotor skill such as golf, for instance, as opposed to the affective behaviors that might be required to train customer service representatives.
How to design an instructional design?
Begin by pinpointing, as precisely as possible, what it is that the learner will know and be able to do when the instruction is completed. This is often the hardest part in the instructional design cycle, but is the foundation upon which the rest of the process is dependent. Avoid ‘soft goals’ that are imprecise and include vague verbs such as ‘will understand’. Classify your instructional objectives according to the three learning domains – cognitive, affective and psychomotor and try to create goals for demonstrable skills and behaviors.
What are the three learning domains?
Classify your instructional objectives according to the three learning domains – cognitive, affective and psychomotor and try to create goals for demonstrable skills and behaviors. 2. Know Your Audience. This principle is just as important in instructional design as it is in public speaking.
What is the challenge of designing instructional materials?
Staying on top of rapidly changing business and technical environments is a challenge. To accomplish this, education or training in some form is necessary in every field, very often and usually on very short notice. Creating instructional materials under these circumstances can be a daunting task, to say the least, but it is possible to do so by applying some basic instructional design principles.
Is learning an ongoing process?
Learning is an ongoing process and sometimes the value of the instruction is not immediately apparent. For any problem that man has ever encountered, at least part of the solution involves education or training in some form. Fortunately there are tremendous resources available for this important task.
What are the steps to plan instruction?
Steps for Planning Instruction. Before beginning to plan instruction, the teacher should review the state and national standards, as well as texts and supplemental materials, to determine what concepts he must cover over the course of the school year. He should include any required test-preparation material.
What can teachers do to help students?
Instead of just letting students talk, teachers can use this time for extra instruction or fun learning activities, such as playing parts of speech bingo, reviewing upcoming calendar events, or discussing current events.
What should be included in a lesson plan?
Creating detailed unit lesson plans, which should include objectives, activities, time estimates, and required materials
Why is planning important in a classroom?
A well-planned class reduces stress on the teacher and helps minimize disruptions. When teachers know what they need to accomplish and how they are going to do it, they have a better opportunity to achieve success with ...
Why is it important to have a lesson plan for a substitute teacher?
Emergency lesson plans are a necessity for all teachers. If the teacher cannot make it to school because he is ill or has to deal with a last-minute emergency or family illness, a detailed lesson plan can help the substitute continue with the planned lessons and have a smooth day with students. Such lessons, combined with a substitute folder, are important to help the classroom function smoothly in the teacher's absence.

What Are Instructional Materials, Anyway?
- Instructional materials are various resources that enhance learners’ experiences in their learning environment (Awolaju, 2016), be it face-to-face or online settings. Examples include textbooks, pre-recorded lectures, videos, images, posters, job aids, and charts.
Why Are Effective Instructional Materials Important?
- In any learning environment, effective instructional materials help promote learners’ success (Ajoke, 2017). In some situations, like asynchronous online programs, these materials may be the main component available to learners. In others, learners may be able to ask the facilitator for assistance, but may not receive the help they need the most for learning. Effective instructional …
How Can You Write Effective Instructional Materials?
- To maximize a learner’s experience, a variety of instructional materials should be included, such as textbooks, videos, images, graphic organizers, charts, and supplementary readings. There are also a few factors to be taken into consideration when writing instructional materials. 1. Structure and Organize your Content Content should be presented i...
About The Writer
- Georgette is a candidate for her Master of Arts in Education with Emphasis in Educational Technology and Instructional Design from the University of Balamand. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Education. Georgette currently focuses on developing learning experiences for K-12 school learners. She enjoys the content creation process and collaborating in a team to create and deliv…