Abstract:

This paper explores a professional development (PD) series tailored for Egyptian university faculty, aimed at integrating instructional design (ID) principles, particularly within curriculum and course design. Anchored by Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction, the series fosters the development of diverse, engaging, and effective teaching methodologies and conditions for learning.

This model is based on a sequence of nine events that enhance learning and promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills through:
(1) gaining the attention of the students,
(2) informing students of the outcomes of the unit of instruction to help them understand what they are expected to learn and do;
(3) stimulating recall of prior learning;
(4) presenting the content;
(5) providing learning guidance and helping students learn how to learn;
(6) eliciting performance (practice);
(7) providing feedback;
(8) assessing performance; and
(9) enhancing retention and knowledge transfer.

Faculty members participating in this PD series learn how to select and apply the technologies to support these events of instruction across varied subject areas, teaching contexts, and modalities, including in-person, blended, and online environments.

Central to the proposed approach is the application of ID principles, enabling faculty to implement real-world teaching scenarios effectively. The professional development efforts extend beyond theoretical concepts, urging faculty to build a comprehensive technology toolkit and enhance learning and teaching through tools such as videos, content authoring, interactive polling, screencasting, concept mapping, social bookmarking, AI apps, etc., aligned with Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. With the understanding that university budgets are limited, most technologies we explore are free. These technologies and related use cases are collected in the authors’ online library of resources and serve as reference materials supporting this paper.

The paper discusses the successes and challenges encountered during the pilot phase, illustrating the indispensable value of structured PD in instructional design principles and technologies to support and enhance conditions for learning and foster an educational environment conducive to faculty innovation and student success.

Keywords:

Instructional design, professional development, faculty training, Gagne’s nine events of instruction, educational technology, higher education, Egypt.