Developing Instructional Materials

Designers must make concious efforts to present lessons for learners to fully crasp, making learning effective. Self-paced learning as an instructional format is a means by which learners learn or master certain skills at their individual pace. As learners go through the learning process, they become responsible and learning becomes successful based on the learning objectives and variety of activities. Learners must be catered for individually with different objectives as well as learning activities taking into cognisance each learner's characteristics, preparation, needs as well as interests.

Individual differences must be catered for if effective learning will be achieved and this can be made possible if variety of materials serving the objectives, with more than one instructional sequence is used. Some learners learn fast while others are slow. Some do well with printed materials whereas others perform better with hands on experience. This therefore means that, varied activities reflecting objectives should be prepared, making room for individual learners to make preferred choices.

For example, if an objective states that by the end of the lesson or instruction, learners will be able to say, design a fabric using the marbling technique, the programme may include printed steps to follow, still photographs, a film or videotape and the tools and materials, all focussed on producing a marbled fabric. Some learners may decide to watch the video and move straight to the real work of designing the fabric. Others might prefer reading the steps, study the still photographs before going on to the actual work. Another group might also read the steps, study the photographs, watch the video before proceeding to design the fabric, and there are other learners who will just go straight to designing the fabric using a trial-and-error attempt.

There is a way instructors can check on bad habits such as lack of self-descipline and procrastination with self paced instruction, and that can be acheived through setting deadlines within which some learners can adjust their own study pace so that learning can be beneficial for them.