(Almost) Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Effective Instruction I Learned through Correspondence Courses

By Robert F. Mager

The following article is excerpted from Robert F. Mager's newest book, Life in the Pinball Machine (CEP Press, Feb. 2003). This "story behind the story" offers a revealing and humorous look at the experiences and adventures that shaped the mind of one of the most influential people in training and performance improvement.

Long before e-learning, there was c-learning - otherwise known as the correspondence course. I've taken advantage of several over the years. In addition to the subject matter, each course taught me something about how (and how not) to structure effective instruction.

Practice makes perfect and other instructional observations about ventriloquism
Like most kids, I looked at the "Lemme out" magazine ads and fantasized myself a famous ventriloquist making all kinds of things talk. An opportunity finally presented itself when, in 1969, I bought a ventriloquial correspondence course and bought a used vent figure (if you call them "dummies" they'll find ways to get even) from a retiring ventriloquist.

The course wasn't badly constructed, but it was slow going. I'd sit at home with a puppet on my knee trying to practice, talking to myself, and feeling silly. While there was a source of immediate feedback for lip control practice (a mirror), without a video monitor for feedback, it was hard practicing to make the puppet move as though alive. Though my family said they did in fact hear the puppet talking, I didn't. I developed no confidence at all. Things only improved when I began practicing in front of our video camera and could watch the results on the monitor.

Later, at the urging of a ventriloquist I met at a Magicians' Convention, I entered their vent contest with a borrowed puppet I'd been introduced to only the night before. As there were only five contestants, they pleaded with me to fill in as the sixth. Frantic, I practiced in front of the bathroom mirror while improvising a short skit. (The act involved having stage hands push me onto the stage while I resisted, pretending to be scared mute. During this time, the exasperated puppet encouraged the audience to try to applaud me out of my "coma" and talk).

To my amazement, I won the contest and was more than mildly astonished when a psychiatrist approached me from the audience. He praised me for producing "…the best depiction of a catatonic I've ever seen." Gee, thanks a lot!

Even so, I still felt silly when practicing or performing. It was several years later that I found a book revealing the all-important bit of information I had been lacking: ventriloquists themselves can never hear the illusion! No matter how skillful they become at making the puppet talk, they can never avoid hearing in their own head the voices they're making for the puppet. Well, of course! It was suddenly obvious! Knowing that critical fact made it possible for me to develop confidence and quickly learn to act as though the voices were being produced by the puppets themselves.

But such obvious facts are often not obvious to the struggling learner. This experience gave me insight into the reasons why instruction offered by subject matter experts often is flawed and difficult to understand. People highly knowledgeable in a subject are very likely to leave out critical pieces of information when offering explanations. They don't deliberately withhold information; it's just that they learned those critical bits so long ago they're often unaware of what they're doing. It's best, therefore, always to question experts closely when using them as a source of information.

The proof is in the picking
By far the best course I've ever taken was a correspondence course on locksmithing. I found the ubiquitous ad urging me to "Be a Locksmith" in an issue of Popular Mechanics and sent away for the information. When the first lessons arrived, I immediately dived in.

Expecting the course to begin with dreary expositions on the history of locks, or key appreciation, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that lesson number one was on how to pick a lock. A combination lock was provided (the kind often used on high school lockers) along with a suitable pick, and within ten minutes of beginning the course, I was deeply engrossed in practicing a fascinating skill. At the end of the first lesson, I was able to exclaim, "Hey, lemme show you how I can pick this lock!"

A constant stream of lessons arrived in the mail, each of them task-oriented and beautifully orchestrated. I received a series of lock cores, with instructions to change the combination to the numbers given and return them to the instructor. I received a bag of combination locks with instructions to pick them open, tape them in place, and return them to the instructor. At one point I even received part of a car door and was told that the door-locking mechanism had a broken spring. I was instructed to make a new one, install it, and return it to the instructor.

During the lessons, time was taken out to learn what I needed to know (the "theory") just before beginning to practice. And, after each lesson I could do something important to the final goal I couldn't do before. The least interesting skills - paperwork tasks associated with the craft - were saved until the end, when the student could already smell the fresh ink on the diploma.

The mechanics of the course were so motivating I once found myself writing a letter to the instructor: "Your advertising promised that your mailings are scheduled so I'll never be out of lessons, but I've been out of lessons now for three whole days. Hurry up and send more!"

Truly a splendid example of instructional design and delivery. The entire course was built around the tasks to be mastered. Immediate practice of new skills led to growing confidence and eagerness to learn more. Feedback was built into the tasks being practiced (e.g., it was obvious whether you did or did not pick a lock open). Finally, theory was seeded in chunks just large enough to prepare for the practice to follow. In sum, the course was masterfully constructed to implement just about every principle of effective instruction.

Did it work? Did I learn anything useful? The big test came one day in a parking lot, when a colleague discovered he had locked himself out of his car. Having left my picks at home, I borrowed a toolkit, selected a couple of pointy things, and popped the lock open within thirty seconds. The satisfaction of that moment still lingers.

Take a stroll in your students' shoes
Periodically adopting the role of student has been a useful activity, heightening my sensitivity to obvious and subtle do's and don'ts of instructional design. Perhaps more importantly, an occasional stroll in the students' shoes reminds me of the vulnerability they often feel when faced with learning something new.

It was obvious through my experiences with the correspondence courses that the success of a course is not shrouded in the theatrical skill of an instructor, or the media through which it is presented. The magic is in the degree to which the principles of effective instruction are implemented - instruction leading to the ability to perform useful skills, that provides relevant practice and feedback, as well as lessons sequenced to motivate the student rather than to satisfy tradition or instructor preference. With those ingredients in the instructional soup, success is all but guaranteed.

About Robert F. Mager
Dr. Mager is a world-renowned expert on training and performance improvement. He is credited with revolutionizing the industry by creating the movement toward a performance-based approach to improving human performance. One of his most significant contributions is his development (with Peter Pipe) of the Criterion-Referenced Instruction (CRI) methodology. He has written ten books on issues relating to training and performance improvement that have sold over three and a half million copies worldwide.

For more information on Dr. Mager's newest book, Life in the Pinball Machine, click here.