5 Star Instruction

Does your instruction rate 5 stars?

Over the years I have had the opportunity to evaluate hundreds of instructional products. An amazing number of these are surprisingly ineffective and some do not teach at all. Like a book, too much instruction is judged by its cover -- the glitz, glitter, or game-like interaction -- that too often is irrelevant to the effectiveness of the instruction. With our 5 stars we are attempting to look beneath the "production quality" of an instructional product to the instructional strategies involved, those aspects of the instruction that are hard to observe on the surface, but that determine whether or not the product will really teach. With the 5 stars you can learn to rate an instructional product on those characteristics that effect its ability to teach rather than those attributes that contribute only to its "market appeal".

The 5 Star Rating Scale consists of First Principles of Instruction derived from a careful analysis of existing instructional design theories and research on instruction. Click here for our new paper First Principles of instruction.

Click here for a 15 minute video presentation that overviews 5 star instruction.

Click here for the 5 Star Rating Scale.

Click here for PDF copy of slides for Presentation -- First Principles of Instruction

Click here for PDF copy of slides for Presentation -- Does Your Instruction Rate 5 Stars? First Principles of Instruction

Click here for PDF copy of slides for Presentation -- Designing Five Star Instruction

A New Book in Preparation	Workshops Available
As we make progress on this writing we will post excerpts here. You may want to check back from time to time.	Click here for an outline of the Five Star Workshop.
Click here for an Introduction to the book.	Click here for an abstract for the Five Star Workshop

Future Presentations and Workshops by M. David Merrill

Date	Location	Organization
Oct. 30, 2001	Green Bay Wisconsin	Governor's Wisconsin Educational Technology Conference (GWETC) "First Principles of Instruction" "A Pebble-in-the-Pond Model for Instructional Development" www.gwetc.org
Nov. 6-9, 2001	Atlanta Georgia	AECT (www.aect.org) "First Principles of Instruction"
Nov. 16-17, 2001	Busan South Korea	International Symposium on Virtual Education (2001-ISVE) "First Principles Instruction"
Feb. 18 -20, 2002	Atlanta Georgia	Training 2002 Conference and Expo "Mental Models, Knowledge Objects, and Instructional Design" "Does Your Instruction Rate Five Stars - Workshop" "A Pebble-in-the-Pond Model for Instructional Development" www.vnulearning.com

For more information or to schedule a workshop for your institution
please send your query to merrill@cc.usu.edu