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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

Andrew S. Gibbons1

© Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020

Abstract
Instructional strategy is defined in abstract terms independent of instructional theories, phi-
losophies, or standard formulas. Strategies share dimensions in common that allow instruc-
tional designers to communicate about them in theory-agnostic terms. These dimensions
supply a common reference for comparing design viewpoints and discussing their relative
strengths and applicability. This definition simplifies the design of strategies. It provides a
stable framework for the instructional designer, regardless of loyalty to a philosophy or the-
ory. Examples show how theories about strategy compare with regard to the framework’s
dimensions.

Keywords Instructional systems design · Instructional design theory · Architectural theory

of instructional design · Instructional theory · Instructional technology

Defining strategy

There are many de facto definitions of instructional strategy existing in designed products,
but where is the summary definition that brings consolidation and reconciliation to a topic
that has thousands of examples but no existential center? Where is the interpretive key for
typifying and comparing features and qualities of instructional strategies to allow design-
ers of opposing views to speak a common design language despite their theoretic differ-
ences? This article proposes a functionally oriented and theory-agnostic characterization of
instructional strategy that designers may find practically useful in the creation of plans for
instructional strategy at all levels of a design.
Many major works in the literature of instructional technology, cognitive psychology,
the learning sciences, and social learning theory qualify as statements about instructional
strategy. These works are major expressions of big ideas on learning and instruction and do
not often introduce themselves as studies of “instructional strategy” per se. They take posi-
tions on major themes, so they do not address the implications of their ideas for the daily
work of instructional designers, except tangentially. Therefore, though we have numer-
ous descriptions of individual strategies, we have no common language for describing

* Andrew S. Gibbons
andy_gibbons@byu.edu
1
Instructional Psychology and Technology Department, McKay School of Education, Brigham
Young University, 150‑A MCKB, Provo, UT 84602, USA

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 A. S. Gibbons

independently what constitutes a strategy. This article’s goal is to build a model of an

underlying unity that exists buried within this vast literature and to point out its practical
importance.
I propose twelve dimensions that provide a framework for the expression of instruc-
tional strategies (Fig. 1).
These dimensions have been distilled from major works espousing theories or philoso-
phies of instruction. It is proposed that a complete instructional strategy consists of plans
in all twelve dimensions, including: (a) a set of time-defined events, each having (b) a
physical or virtual setting, (c) a social milieu, (d) roles for participants, (e) roles for learn-
ing companions, (f) goals, (g) activity elements, (h) information elements, (i) interaction
guidelines, (j) communication infrastructure, (k) assessment elements, and (l) an algorithm
or rule for event sequencing. Absent any of these dimensions, I suggest that a strategy lacks
specificity and completeness. These strategy dimensions, since they are theory-agnos-
tic, pertain alike to strategies created by the most progressive and the most conventional
theoretical and philosophical positions. The remaining sections of this article explore the
dimensions of strategy hypothesized above individually by naming them and providing
examples of representative theoretical and philosophical applications from the literature of
instructional technology, cognitive psychology, the learning sciences, and social learning
theory.

The focus on events

Events are the most central construct of instructional strategies—containers—made unique

by the remaining dimensions that they figuratively contain. Events are defined in tempo-
ral terms: they have starting and ending times, and a duration. Classroom teachers struc-
ture the day in terms of periods that have a temporal length. Within periods they allocate
amounts of time, either by pre-planning or by decisions made in real time, to devote a

Fig. 1  Temporal events as containers for the features that make them unique

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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

certain amount of time to specific goals and activities. The duration of an instructional
event is limited by the attention, motivation span, and capability of the learner.
Events are periods of time of different lengths to be filled with the substance by the
remaining dimensions listed above. Metaphorically, the event is an anchor point to which
other dimensions of strategy inhere. Each dimension adds constructs to evolving event
plans. Here is a brief summary of how these dimensions come together in strategy expres-
sions. Every event places the learner in a physical setting and likewise in a social setting.
Within the social setting there may be roles to be taken by different participants. Within
this context, learners may either contrive their own goals or respond to goals set by oth-
ers. Activities may be specified, or the choice of an activity may be left to the learner.
Information elements accompany and support activity: preceding, during, and/or after it.
Information elements may be supplied by media or human resources, including learner-
to-learner communications. Both human and technology-situated strategies may be gov-
erned by guidelines for interactions. Communication infrastructure is specified to handle
person-to-person communication, media, hardware and software technology, or a blending
of these. An event will contain an assessment plan as one of its dimensions. This element
is essential and has many implications for the level of adaptivity of the instruction. Finally,
a strategy design will possess an ordering rule or algorithm that controls the order in which
strategy events are sequenced.
Events have an inner composition. As units of time, they are composed of smaller events
representing subdivisions of event time. Those events are likewise composed of timed
events, each with an allocation of time. Because every sub-event possesses all dimensions.
the event is a self-similar, recursive structure at all levels of a design. Therefore, events can
be used to typify and compare strategies from the highest level of definition recursively
down to the most detailed level the designer has chosen to notice.

Sources of strategic guidance

Strategy dimensions are implicit in expositions of learning theory, instructional theory,

cognitive theory, social learning theory, educational philosophy, learning research, and
common practice. Schools of strategic thought also coalesce around technological fashions
and breakthroughs. Descriptions of designed strategies or strategy frameworks in the litera-
ture exemplify one or more of the dimensions named above, often obliquely, in the course
of making their broad theoretical or philosophical statements. Some of these descriptions
touch on several dimensions, while others consider only a few. Significantly, it is difficult to
find a single source that specifies all of the dimensions, hence the need for a more complete
enumeration of the dimensions.
The complex and numerous details of complete designs are beyond the limitations of
individual designers, so teams of specialists (artists, programmers, writers, etc.) normally
work on portions of a design relevant to their specialized skills. Documentation of an
architectural design theory that considers a wide range of design domains is provided in
Gibbons (2014); Gibbons and Rogers (2009); Gibbons and Langton (2016), and Gibbons
and Boling (in press). Discussion in this article will be limited to the strategic dimensions
listed above.
The sections that follow provide examples of major theoretical and philosophical
sources that lend support for the existence of these twelve strategy dimensions. An exhaus-
tive review of the literature, for any one of the dimensions, is impractical because of the

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 A. S. Gibbons

volume of detail it would entail. That lends credibility to the idea that these dimensions are
real and that they are attested by common practice. What is given here intends to name the
dimensions themselves and demonstrate their importance.

One or more time‑defined events

The work model and microworld constructs were invented as event structures. The work
model (Bunderson et al. 1981; Gibbons et al. 1995) was invented to give a name to the
practice of bundling performance tasks into parcels that represented progressions of per-
formance from easy to hard. A work model’s purpose is to “systematically combine and
recombine tasks and objectives which through task analysis have been fragmented at a low
level” (p. 222), allowing practice for any given task to take place within the context of
many different groupings of related tasks.
The work model is a macro-strategy construct because it supplies the designer with a
very useful unit of dynamic instructional scope out of which a syllabus can be built.
The terms “work model” and “instructional event” are not synonymous, but they
are closely related. A work model defines a constellation one or more tasks to be
instructed, practiced, and potentially tested in the presence of each other or within
the same integrated practice environment. Since the same combination of tasks may
require instruction, practice, and testing on multiple separate occasions, each occa-
sion is specified as a separate, schedulable instructional event. Thus, there is a one-
to-one or a one-to-many mapping from work models to instructional events…. (p.
223)
The distinction between the work model and the event is that an event represents a slice
of time, while a work model is a bundle of objectives and tasks. This is an important dis-
tinction, because each event possesses its own environment and scaffolding conditions and
can use the same work model group of goals to provide a graded, progression of events.
Distinguishing work models, which are defined in terms of objectives and performance
tasks, from events, which represent an allocation of time, allows the focus to be on the
dynamism of a strategy. The event is the basic strategy construct. It is events (slices of
time) and not work models (groupings of instructional goals) that are eventually sequenced
into a syllabus.
Gibbons et al. (1995) list several benefits possible through focusing on the event rather
than the instructional goal (work model) as the central focus of strategy-building. These
have to do with strategic support for approximation toward competence for a given set of
goals, meaning that the same set of goals may require multiple events set in different envi-
ronments, with increasingly challenging criteria to accomplish mastery:
A second example of strategic theory that uses event structure to achieve gradually
increasing challenge was described by Burton et al. (1999), in “Skiing as a Model of
Instruction”. The central construct of sequenced structure was the “increasingly complex
microworld” (ICM).
In this paradigm, the student is exposed to a sequence of environments (microw-
orlds) in which tasks become increasingly complex. The purpose of an individual
microworld is to provide the student with a task that he can perform successfully
using a simplified version of the final skill that is the goal. This allows the student to
focus and master one aspect of the skill in a context that requires related subskills.

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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

As a result, the student learns when to use the skill as well as how to use it. The pur-
pose of the sequence is to evolve the simplified skills toward the goal skill. The ICM
framework focuses both on what is learned in any particular microworld and on how
to choose the next microworld in sequence. (Burton et al. 1999, p. 139)
In order to understand the emphasis on defining events as discrete time periods, it
should be noted that the subject-matter vehicle for expressing the ICM concept was skiing.
ICM instruction took place on the ski hill with learners normally receiving only one ses-
sion—one time period of instruction. Before that instruction period, students were graded
for their readiness to join a particular instructional group. Then the selected group moved
to a particular location in the ski area that possessed the appropriate slope and snow con-
ditions. At that location, multiple goals might be pursued, but they were pursued in some
temporal sequence. This highlights the importance of seeing that events are made up of
events. During an event at a single location, instruction may focus on one instructional
goal, and then (after a time) on another goal or combination of goals. During a later ses-
sion, the learner could have a second exposure to the same grouping of goals, perhaps at a
different ski area, for additional practice opportunities on the same work model under dif-
ferent hill environments.

Physical or virtual setting

An interesting aspect of the ICM theory is that ski-hill terrain is part of the complexity
calculation. The ICM is an illustration of how physical setting becomes a factor in strategy
choices. The physical setting of ICM events was a slope and the condition of the prac-
tice hill. Gentle terrain limits speed; steeper slopes present new levels of difficulty. Good-
year (2008) provides a discussion of the strategic importance of learning places in situated
learning contexts. Stanney (2002) describes virtual reality (VR) environments as virtual
settings and as a key dimension of strategy, whose function is to transport the learner to a
virtual place for learning: a jungle, a laboratory, or a sandbox.
…A virtual environment (i.e., a modeled world) can represent a “truth” that can edu-
cate, train, and inspire. In theory ultimate form, virtual environments (VEs) immerse
users in a fantastic world, one that stimulates multiple senses and provides vibrant
experience that somehow transform those exposed (e.g., via training educating, mar-
keting, or entertaining). (Stanney and Zyda 2002, p. 2)
Mobile learning (Sharples et al. 2009) provides a virtual interaction space that can be as
immersive visually and sensorially as VR. With mobile learning, the use of a natural envi-
ronment is a strategy design factor, and the virtual social space can become a “place” for
interaction (Parsons et al. 2007).

Social milieu

Social setting became a critical dimension of strategy plans with the increasing influence
of social learning theory. The social learning dimension of a strategy plan includes add-
ing people for interaction within either physical or virtual locations. Social group learn-
ing differs from role-centered learning (see next section), as it does not make role assign-
ments; instead learners communicate within a more-loosely affiliated group. In this section

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 A. S. Gibbons

we will note examples of instructional designs that have found the social environment an
important dimension in their strategy design including collaborative group or team-based
learning, and the phenomenon of communities of practice.
Collaborative learning encompasses many forms of cooperative learning engagement,
all of them representing a need for strategy design within the social milieu dimension.
Andreissen et al. (2003) frames the topic of collaborative learning by stating that, “knowl-
edge lies less in databases than in people, and has to be disclosed by some form of collec-
tive activity, and people have to learn how to be engaged in collaborative activities that
produce new knowledge” (p. 1). An instructional designer specifies the social composition
of the learning cohort, even if it consists of only one person but as often as not, it consists
of a number of learners engaged in learning that involves some degree of collaboration.
A strategy design specifies social configurations that achieve different purposes. The
goal may be to master subject-matter, or to instill habits of independent learning, prob-
lem-solving, and discovery in learners. Andreissen et al. (2003) suggests that the common
thread running through collaborative learning strategic configurations for any purpose is
some form of constructive argumentation: the expression of a position in the presence of
either friendly or adversarial commentators.
A different interpretation of the social dimension is proposed by Lave and Wenger
(1991), who interpret the social dimension of strategy as a manifestation of a pervasive and
natural human phenomenon, the formation of communities of practice. According to Lave
and Wenger, learning is situated in shared practices in which the learner is legitimized to
participate. Over the course of time, the learner is drawn through social forces toward the
center of communities with which they choose to affiliate. In some communities there exist
de facto role descriptions, like those described in the next section.

Roles for participants

The assignment of specific roles to participants in an instructional event represents a dis-

tinct dimension of strategy design. By assigning roles to individual members of a learning
group, new strategy rules are introduced, as well as new instructional goals, and the social
unit for which the strategy is devised becomes the group, rather than the individual.
One type of assigned role consists of following a script: acting out explicit scripted
actions, as in performing a dramatic script, or playing a position in a sports play. A second
type of assigned role consists of following a set of guidelines, where each learner makes up
or improvises actions within given guidelines. The assigned role as a strategic device can
yield at least four benefits: (a) as the group succeeds in acting out scripted parts, they learn
how to act in concert, in joint action, and a team learns how to act in coordination, (b) par-
ticipants are able through joint action to observe a phenomenal model they themselves cre-
ate, (c) as a learner is cycled through different assigned roles, the learner can obtain a more
complete understanding of the emergent phenomenon created by group by concentrating
on one of its parts, and (d) self-directed expertise can emerge as a learner transitions from
a scripted assignment to increasingly improvised and self-chosen actions. In all of these
cases, the role assigned can be seen as a scaffold that is removed as self-direction matures.
Reciprocal teaching (Brown and Palincsar 1989) provides an example of this use of
shifting role assignment from the teacher to the learner. Learners first observe the teacher
while the teacher models a process of comprehending a passage of reading that entails
question generation, summarizing, clarifying word meanings, and predicting what might

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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

come next. The teacher then invites the learners to participate in the process, over multi-
ple sessions gradually turning responsibility for these functions over to them, scaffolding
their efforts with hints, corrections, explanations, and additional modeling of the process.
The learners engage in the public modeling of a process that normally is hidden within
the mind. Over time, this process can be appropriated by the individual learner and made
habitual.

Roles for learning companions

A learning companion is a special case of collaborative learning and a special case of a

social role. Students in formal instruction are normally accompanied by a learning com-
panion of some kind, usually a teacher, but the functions of a learning companion can
equally well be supplied by a friend, a classmate, a group of other learners, a live tutor,
or a computerized tutor. The companion must be able to carry on a challenging, evalu-
ative discourse of some form with the learner. A learning companion is a more-knowl-
edgeable coach and sometimes a sparring partner in the development of the skill of learn-
ing itself. This view is expressed by Duffy and Cunningham (1996) in their exposition of
constructivism:
It is not that students are learning critical thinking skills, self-directed learning skills,
or collaborative learning skills, nor is it that they are learning “the” content domain.
Rather, it is the activity in relation to the content that defines learning: the ability
to think critically in that content domain, to collaborate with peers and use them to
test ideas about issues, and the ability to locate information related to the issues and
bring it to bear on the diagnosis. (p. 190)
The key quality of a learning companion is a willingness to engage in a conversation
with the learner to resolve conflicts in process and understanding. Live tutors are learning
companions. Fox (1993) provides an in-depth analysis of live tutoring using more-knowl-
edgeable senior students as math tutors. Intelligent tutoring research has explored the use
of learning companions in some cases by studying live tutors (Collins et al. 1975; Merrill
et al. 1992; VanLehn et al. 2003).
Anderson’s early cognitive tutors (Anderson et al. 1996) provided simple feedback
systems. Learner mistakes brought immediate corrective feedback and directions that set
the learner back on a correct course. In Collins’ Socratic dialogues (Collins 1977), feed-
back, which came in the form of thought questions generated by tutoring rules, led learn-
ers through a multi-turn conversation back to a correct conclusion. The AutoTutor system
(Graesser 2016) performs a similar style of tutoring conversation.
One of the most adaptive and human-like tutoring systems is the demonstration sys-
tem called STEVE (Johnson and Rickel 1998; Johnson and Lester 2016), an adaptive
instructor-observer-coach who can demonstrate procedures and monitor learner practice.
STEVE uses gaze and gesture to direct learner attention to points within a complex boiler
room environment, at the same time shifting attention the student while speaking. STEVE
embodies in a virtual learning companion some of the most detailed gesture, expression,
and body language exemplified in computerized instructional avatars (Rickel and Johnson
1999).
Problem-based learning (PBL) uses live tutors as learning companions to small groups
of learners to teach complex diagnostic and prescriptive performance, such as those found

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 A. S. Gibbons

in medical work. The role of the Barrows PBL tutor was defined precisely (Barrows 1986,
1988). The PBL tutor followed rules governing interactions with the learner group and the
conditions for initiating interaction. Rather than engaging learners in ongoing dialogue,
the PBL tutor’s primary function was as an observer of the group’s process: requiring the
group to determine its own problem-solving goals, asking corrective questions only when
searches for a solution went too far afield, and pausing the group from time to time to ask
it to conduct a self-evaluation of its own process. Barrows’ tutors performed the carefully-
designed and disciplined role of a learning companion. This system was more precise and
clearly-defined than most, and it exemplifies the strategic design of a learning companion
role.

Goals

Instructional goals are a critical central dimension of strategy design. Goals and events are
close partners. For many designers, the goal is the first consideration in event formation,
often to the extent that the goal becomes the main basis for event formation. However, this
complicates the creation of progressive syllabi that instruct the goal singly, then in combi-
nation with other goals, then adding complexity by progressively advancing the challenge
posed by new performance environments, conditions, and performance criteria. There has
also been a shift over several decades toward more engaged and active instructional styles
that emphasize the learner’s choices of goals, treating the learner as a more active agent.
The this change also adds to the complexity of strategy design.
Gibbons (2014) describes the interaction of instructional goals—the expression of
desired learning outcomes—with strategic goals—the plan for attaining instructional
goals—and the strategic means plan—a description of the means to be used to attain the
instructional goal. Table 1 illustrates this interaction.
These inner dialogues result from a failure to communicate goals, but they also illus-
trate in practical terms how a variety of goals and transition between different kinds of
goals are required to bridge the gap between performance goals and strategy. Performance
goals specify a target to be hit; strategic goals and means specify how the arrow will get
to the bulls-eye. The implication of the Table 1 dialogue is that the historical approach
to instructional goals has been unidimensional, despite operating in a multi-dimensional

Table 1  A dialogue between the

thoughts of the learner and the
instructor/designer about goals
during instruction (from Gibbons
2014)
(Thinking, but not communicating the instructional goal)
INSTRUCTOR: “The goal we need to reach is XYZ.”
LEARNER: What I would like to achieve is ABC.”
(Thinking, but not communicating the strategic goal)
INSTRUCTOR: “So, I need to use a strategy that involves QRS.”
LEARNER: So, I need to use learning strategy MNO
(Thinking, but not communicating the strategic means plan)
INSTRUCTOR: “Therefore, I can do D, then E, then F.”
LEARNER: “Therefore, I will do I, then H, then G.”
(Thinking, but not communicating)
INSTRUCTOR: “Why is this learner not getting it?”
LEARNER: “Why am I not getting it?”

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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

psychological space. The interaction of the goals of instruction with cognition is much
more complex and thus merits re-visitation as a topic of instructional design.

Activity elements

During instruction learners make choices and act within an environment. Instruction can-
not control the thinking of the learner, but what the instructor/designer places in the path
of the learner can be used as an object of “conversation” that can have considerable impact
on thinking and depth of thought. The object may be something physical, like a bicycle or
a tool, or it may be something virtual, like an idea embedded in a piece of text, or a puzzle
or problem to be solved. By interacting with the object in a way suggested or directed by
the instruction, the learner may be more likely to engage in action or thinking that follows a
certain pattern the instruction was designed to encourage. Wertsch (1998) explains:
One becomes skilled at bicycle riding by interacting with a material object over
enough time to have mastered the challenges this particular object presents. The
nature of this skill need not be understood in an overly narrow way. Once one
becomes somewhat proficient at riding one bicycle, one is not limited to riding that
bicycle alone. (pp. 31–2)
The important principle of activity as a dimension of strategy design is that the objects
placed in the path of the learner may be changed over time, leading the learner to new
skills and new insights because the new object offers new affordances—action possibili-
ties—that invite an extension of previous skill. For this reason, small children are given
bicycles with training wheels, and small readers are given text passages that contain words
and ideas the learner is capable of understanding with a little help.
The conversational object may also invite discovery, as exemplified by Constructionist
learning principles. Constructionism proposes that knowledge can be constructed within
environments that provide appropriate learning tools (Papert 1994; Kafai and Resnick
1996). This may include environments the learner can participate in building and environ-
ments that contain things the learner can build with: robotic sets (Martin et al. 2000), smart
toys (Plowman and Luckin 2004), and interactive surfaces (Evans and Rick 2014). The
design of environments that contain objects for “conversation” are an important dimension
of strategy design.

Information elements

Information elements, a dimension of strategy design, does not refer to textual, graphic,
or auditory representations of information; it refers to still-inchoate idea elements that the
designer feels essential and that may eventually become included in instruction in some
form of media representation through a transformational process. Deciding what informa-
tion represents an essential core in a particular strategy requires a classification of the nec-
essary information pertaining to the learning goal. Classification is achieved through the
construction of an ontological framework appropriate to the instructional goal. Rather than
being absolute, the categories of the framework rely on a judgment of what the designer
thinks will be essential.

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 A. S. Gibbons

A framework represents kinds of information, in the abstract. Once a framework is con-

structed, categories can be filled with specific content and converted to representations—
textual, graphic, or even kinesthetic. Only at that final point should a decision be made
regarding how the information will be represented to the learner. Some frameworks are
straightforward to construct. For example, information required for instruction of a proce-
dure to be delivered by direct instruction includes a listing of steps and information neces-
sary for the learner to perform them. This may include a variety of categories, some of
them very subtle and difficult to capture: initiation cues, step action, termination cues, cau-
tions, special techniques, common errors, and so forth. For these choices there is no abso-
lute other than the designer’s selections. However, this does not mean that the question of
goal-related information ontologies should not be explored in much greater detail through
systematic design-based research.
Merrill’s (Merrill et al. 1980; Merrill and Twitchell 1994) component display theory
defines an information framework that was intended to speed the design of hundreds of
computer-based instruction lessons in math and grammar during a period when most CBI
lessons were one-of-a-kind handmade products. Prior to Merrill’s work, Horn proposed
Information ­Mapping© (Horn et al. 1969; Horn 1993) and Evans et al. (1962) proposed the
RULEG system for the purposes of CBI and programmed instruction design respectively.
These were not taxonomies of instructional goal types, but rather taxonomies of message
or information type.
Indirect instructional strategies also have associated information frameworks. A sim-
ple example of this is classical problem-based learning (PBL), as defined and described
by Barrows (1988) for medical instruction. During the solution of a problem, the PBL
group tutor possesses a casebook that contains a complete description of a patient’s his-
tory, including the original complaint, possible treatments, and the final diagnosis and pre-
scribed actions. As the problem-solving group meets for a case, the original complaint is
presented by the tutor. Group members ask questions among themselves. They may ask
for additional information from the casebook, but if they ask content questions of the
tutor, they are put back to their own resources, which may include medical texts, online
resources, doctors, and other sources. The goal of PBL is to get the learners asking the
right questions in order to become efficient and resourceful problem solvers and then to
learn the answers from their own exploration of the kinds of information resources avail-
able in the workplace. A tutor may interrupt the group when it has wandered into the weeds
and offer a hint, but otherwise, the group manages its own problem solving. Every case-
book represents an instance of a populated information framework. It is possible to envi-
sion a prototypical casebook framework for any family of PBL problems, based on the type
of problem content and the instructional goal. Additionally, the participants’ explorations
in available information resources is an exercise in ontology-formation on their part, illus-
trating that ontology concerns of the designer should be of wider scope than simply what
will appear in an instructional product.

Interaction guidelines

In a live classroom, interaction guidelines may be created for administrative purposes, such
as signaling for attention by hand raising. However, many forms of instruction specify
interaction guidelines more closely related to the goals of instruction. These guidelines
constitute a dimension of instructional strategy design.

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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

The interaction guidelines for a live tutoring session are normally set by the participants
at the beginning of a session. This description by Fox (1993) is typical:
In all of the face-to-face sessions we observed, the first few minutes were spent nego-
tiating how the student and the tutor would be working together. Neither the tutor
nor the student came to the session with fixed plans for how the session should pro-
ceed…. In no case did any of the participants say anything like “here’s what we’re
going to do today. (p. 32)
Adaptive instruction requires an affirmation of interaction guidelines, either explicitly
or through a set of directions. In the case of a tutoring relationship, there normally exists
a problem that occasions a tutoring session. To begin, students normally state the problem
and perhaps a goal they want to reach. A discussion of interaction guidelines normally
includes guidelines for initiative taking, the degree of guidance desired by the learner, and
a negotiation of a plan for how to proceed.
Two examples of interaction guidelines—for intelligent tutoring and problem-based
learning (PBL)—differ because the possibility of negotiation is not present in the first
case and because the learner is a member of an organized group in the second and cannot
control the group’s choices directly. Both of these strategy designs have strong interaction
guidelines. Interaction with an intelligent tutor normally (but not always) follows a dia-
logic pattern constrained by the system. The learner is expected to learn how to respond
to the system according to a fixed conversational logic built-in to the system. There are, of
course, exceptions to this interaction pattern, but even in the exceptions there is normally
little to negotiate due to the structure of the system.
PBL (according to Barrows’ classical definition) is conducted in groups, and the strict
guidelines for interaction are explained to the group by the tutor. It should be noted that
since Barrows published his PBL system, many imitators have designed their own ver-
sions, with widely varying results, a phenomenon discussed by McDonald and Gibbons
(2007). The strict discipline of the interactions, therefore, should be seen as one of the key
principles of the strategy design. As Barrows asserts, “tutoring is a teaching skill central to
problem-based, self-directed learning…. Although tutorial teaching seems natural for some
teachers, it is a difficult skill to understand and apply for many teachers who are used to
didactic teaching approaches” (Barrows 1988, p. ii).
Among the dimensions of strategy design, interaction guidelines may be considered by
some one of the least important, but the examples presented here, which are by no means
unrepresentative of more recent innovative designs, seem to indicate that careful planning
of interaction guidelines is an important consideration.

Communication infrastructure

Few would question the importance of the communication infrastructure dimension of

strategy design, because media design has been a central theme of instructional technology
from the earliest days of the field. What should be noted is the wide range of communica-
tion technologies that exist today that did not exist in the 1940s and 1950s. The media form
explosion has led to innovations that pioneers in the field would not have imagined: online
learning, collaborative learning over distances, multi-user forms of games and simulations,
and questions of blended learning. This list is not exhaustive, but it represents a cross-
section of communications strategy options.

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 A. S. Gibbons

The strategic element to communications strategy design hinges on cost, accessibility,

and appropriateness to the instructional goal. In early days of media technology, media
selection models had a short half-life, until it was realized that media centers were expen-
sive and that they did not provide access to decentralized training locations. Inexpensive
and ubiquitous portable options solve that problem today, but they have the quality of being
individualistic, meaning that they tend to be oriented to individual use and do not blend
easily with other media forms. This has led to a research interest in blended learning (Gra-
ham 2019) techniques.
Group-oriented instructional strategies have solved some of the individualism problems
of portable forms, providing an alternative to social isolation. Collaborative learning envi-
ronments take advantage of this strength, many of them functioning on a drop-in, drop-out
basis, erasing the problem of time zones and time schedules. Multi-user gaming shares this
flexibility, but it waits to be seen whether the gaming strategy (the activity dimension) can
produce a significant body of substantive instruction capable of producing levels of moti-
vation and engagement comparable to the majority of today’s game products.

Assessment elements

The ability to continually assess progress during instruction between or within instruc-
tional events is essential to achieving any degree of adaptivity to individual learners. The
granularity of assessments is directly related to the degree of adaptivity. The inclusion of
assessment capability in strategy designs therefore represents an important dimension. The
problem of adaptability was recognized mid-twentieth century as the problem of “individu-
alized instruction”. The drive for intelligent instructional systems is largely driven by this
still-unsolved problem. Adaptive, personalized instruction is always driven forward by a
continuous diagnosis-and-repair cycle.
The advent of the computer as an instructional device produced hope that instruction
could be made adaptive. In chapters of a landmark volume of readings on computer-
assisted instruction (Atkinson and Wilson 1969), several distinguished authors proposed
their visions of future computer systems that would administer conversational instruction.
The ultimate computer-based instructional system is one in which the student could
input free-form questions and statements which would be analyzed by the system and
understood in the sense that the system would then compose and display appropriate
replies. (Atkinson and Wilson 1969, p. 8)
Among the problems that existed then that have not yet been solved is the problem
of diagnosis of need through continuous measurement. Our tools for automated, embed-
ded, continuous assessment are still inferior to the live teacher and the tutor. Our methods
for implementing the diagnose-repair cycle are primitive. We must hope that continued
research will allow us to better understand the nuances of this adaptive cycle.

An algorithm or rule for event sequencing

Holding the description of the sequencing dimension for last is no indication that it is less
important. During event design, designers place fragmented instructional goals or group-
ings of goals into events, along with other strategic elements. During event sequencing the

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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

designer defines how events can be scheduled in a sequence that is fixed, algorithmic, or
learner-selected.
Choosing the event as the sequenced element in a design, rather than the instructional
goal, provides maximum flexibility. It allows instructional goals to be practiced individu-
ally or in various groupings and sequences once or multiple times, under identical or dif-
fering conditions, in the same or different performance environments, and with the same or
different conversational objects.
Reigeluth (1999) describes a system for sequencing under the title of elaboration the-
ory, and his chosen structure for sequencing instruction is the objective or group of objec-
tives. Previous sections above have described why the sequencing solution proposed and
favored here is the event. Reigeluth’s Elaboration theory proposes different patterns that
can be used to sequence groupings of objectives. In his view, some subject-matters are
best instructed in chronological order, such as history or procedures. Some other subject-
matters are best instructed using a bottom-up “prerequisites first” hierarchical pattern remi-
niscent of Gagné’s learning hierarchies (White and Gagné 1974).
One of Reigeluth’s most interesting ideas on the topic of sequencing is the epitome,
which simplifies instruction on complex subject-matters. An epitome is the distilled
essence of a body of knowledge, presented in simplified form and then elaborated by
adding complexity by degrees. Having the barest structure of the subject-matter in mind,
the learner is able to learn newer, more detailed and complex subject-matter more easily.
Ausubel (Ausubel 1978; Ausubel et al. 1978) had a similar idea, which he described as
the advance organizer. Ausubel’s term for the subsequent learning of more specific and
detailed subject-matter was assimilation. New learning was said to be assimilated into the
more abstract structure that had been learned first, reducing memory load among other
benefits.
A variety of sequencing protocols can be identified in examples we have reviewed above.
Burton et al.’s system of microworlds assumes that challenges on the ski hill will progress
from easy to harder. This sequence is evident in the learner sorting prior to advancing to
the hill by ability level. Reciprocal teaching (Brown and Palincsar 1989) depends on a
sequencing process that moves learners from simple to complex, as controlled by the dif-
ficulty level of the reading selected by the instructor. In constructionist theory (Kafai and
Resnick 1996), difficulty can be advanced by varying the difficulty of the problem posed
to the learner or by the learner’s own selection of problems based on interest. Gaming also
presents a study in event sequencing, as many games are graded by easy levels that must be
mastered before moving “up” to a next, more complicated level of integrated skill.
Finally, STAR Legacy (Schwartz et al. 1999) represents a much broader view of
sequencing groups of sequences. Sequences in STAR Legacy are not fixed but are rather
organized around the principle of a learning cycle that consists of stages that could be con-
sidered macro-events or event clusters, including: (a) events that present a challenge to be
overcome, (b) events that support the generation of ideas with respect to the challenge, (c)
events that guide the learner in being exposed to multiple perspectives on the challenge, (d)
events that lead the learner to research and deeper review (e) events that test the depth of
understanding of the original challenge, (f) and events that lead the learner to making pub-
lic expression of findings and proposed solutions.
What is important about STAR Legacy as an example of event sequencing is that
potential events that might be selected (by the learner or the instructor or through nego-
tiation) are connected in very loose-jointed clusters that have a general order among
themselves, but that may be visited and revisited depending on need and negotiation.
The system consists of software that supports this kind of totally-reconfigurable system

13
 A. S. Gibbons

for learning support. There are many other attractive aspects of STAR Legacy, but we
have used it as an example here of flexible sequence at a macro level.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to define instructional strategy in terms of twelve
dimensions of instructional strategy design. The literature on instructional design
is filled with articles, chapters, and books that advocate philosophies or theories of
instruction. A general theory of instructional strategy structure lies buried within these
works, implied by the consensus of attention paid to the dimensions suggested above.
This article merely gives expression to that hidden consensus by citing examples from
the literature that directly or indirectly take a position on one or more of the dimensions.
This article proposes a structural theory restricted to the design of instructional strat-
egy. It should be viewed within the context of a broader architectural theory of instruc-
tional design (Gibbons 2014), which specifies that a complete instructional design con-
sists of at least seven sub-areas defined in terms of functions carried out by virtually all
instructional artifacts. Strategy is but one of the seven areas, and each of those areas
is fragmented into sub-areas—evidence of how increasingly complex designs call for
increasingly specialized designers. The other functional areas concern the design of
knowledge bases, two-way conversational patterns, user control systems, media repre-
sentations, data recording and analysis, and execution logic.
The structural, local theory of strategy design articulated here does not address cer-
tain qualities of the instruction itself. A structural theory of the design process does not
determine the instructional theory that gives specific character to the design. Instruc-
tional strategy may be informed by any of several philosophical or psychological theo-
ries that give specific values to the design: attitudes toward lifelong learning, self-dis-
cipline, moral character, curiosity, self-direction, skills for critical thinking, problem
solving ability, perseverance, tendency to reflect, openness to new perspectives, reason-
ing ability, reasoning with incomplete information, constructive habits of mind, and oth-
ers (Spector, personal communication, February 23, 2020). Likewise, malign instruc-
tional theories may intentionally cultivate closed-mindedness, distrust, fear of deviation
from the norm, narrow thinking, and otherwise fail to equip their learners to function
safely in a digital world. The dimensions of strategy design structuration described
here are intentionally theory-agnostic with respect to these qualities of specific designs.
These are designer choices that reflect the difference between a theory of design and
a theory or philosophy of instruction. The design dimensions in this article have been
abstracted from literature that expresses instructional theories advocating many of the
good qualities described above.
It seems ironic that the area of structural strategy has had no generic, theory-agnostic
definition of its own up to this point, despite the volume of published work describ-
ing different approaches to crafting specific strategies. The hope is that naming these
dimensions might provide a basis for increased discussion of strategy design in its own
right, deeper explorations into the dimensions of instructional design theory in general,
and organization of the knowledge implied in the theoretic literature in a way that helps
correlate instructional and learning theories with the everyday practice of design.

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What is instructional strategy? Seeking hidden dimensions

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest All author declares that they have no conflict of interest.

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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Dr. Andrew S. Gibbons directed projects and designed training systems for industry, government, and mili-
tary for 18 years before joining the Instructional Technology faculty at Utah State University. After ten years
he moved to Brigham Young University as Chair of the Instructional Psychology and Technology Depart-
ment, where he served for 13 years.

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