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Writing Online Instruction
Explaining the Skill or Concept

Set goals for your explanation.
Define success in terms of what you want the students to be able to do.
Teach toward your measure of success.
Avoid the “enemies of understanding,” mistakes that make learning difficult.

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IN THIS LESSON:

GOALS FOR EXPLANATION
ENEMIES OF UNDERSTANDING
STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

 

 Enemies of Understanding

You will not succeed in bringing the students to the level of understanding that they ought to achieve if your explanation is
 

  • incorrect or inaccurate
    		•
  • disorganized
    		•
  • presented in language that the students can’t understand
    		•
  • disconnected from familiar contexts, so that they feel lost
    		•
  • boring
    		•
  • distracting
    		•
  • difficult to remember
    		•
      For Example . . .

    Suppose that the following passage has been written for an elementary course on human anatomy.  If that was the writer’s intent, the passage is a failure.  Read it.  Identify the enemies of understanding within it.  Then think about how you would revise it to make it a more effective explanation.
     

    THE CARDIOVASCULAR CIRCULATORY SYSTEM

      Now let’s determine how the circulatory system works. It’s an amazing system that really should win some sort of design award.  The heart is the engine that keeps this system going, which is essential to the healt of the entire body. The four chambers of the heart are the right and left atria (from the Latin atrium, meaning “corridor”) and the right and left ventricles (from the Latin ventriculus, meaning “a little belly”).
       In one heart beat, deoxygenated blood is pumped to the right side of the heart and from there to the lungs where it will get more oxygen. With that same beat, blood that has picked up oxygen from the lungs enters the left side of that organ, and is pumped out to organs and tissues where it deposits the oxygen.

     
    Doctors use these devices to measure blood pressure.
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