Ep53: Dr M David Merrill, Instructional Researcher

Today my guest is Dr M David Merrill, an Instructional Researcher and professor emeritus at Utah State University. David has been engaged in the study of effective, efficient and engaging instruction for more than 50 years. In this episode, we chat about David’s early studies and research, including his PhD at the University of Illinois in 1964. We chat about David’s additional research activities throughout his extensive career, partly inspired by fellow educational researchers B.F. Skinner and Robert Gagné. David outlines the central role of problems and, more significantly, problem-solving in instruction and how this relates to content, steps and procedures, comprehending processes and responding to conditions. We explore a simple yet profound metaphor of drawing a picture with just three coloured crayons: red, yellow and blue, as the inspiration for his approach to designing effective instruction. David offers insights into his first principles of instruction: telling information, showing examples, asking people to remember information, and finally, taking that information and applying it to solve a problem. Finally, we chat about alternative representations of knowledge and content in an era of advanced technology and artificial intelligence, such as simulations, as well as some of the other future possibilities of instructional design. Links: mdavidmerrill.com https://mdavidmerrill.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/firstprinciplesbymerrill.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._David_Merrill