How does one create effective, efficient, and inspiring instruction?
Elegant instruction, which is effective, efficient, and inspiring, must meet these two criteria: (1) Learners must gain new knowledge, skill, or capability in about 60-70 minutes or less, including practice time; and (2) Inspired by the elegance of the instruction, learners must be compelled to apply what they learned and to learn more.
Topics and skills in every knowledge domain may be taught using elegant instruction. I discuss multiple examples, which include cooking and figure skating, as well as information and communication technology (ICT) topics in my paper currently in press at the Journal of Educational Technology Systems.
Among the ICT topics is HTML, the HyperText Markup Language. This elegant instruction in HTML demonstrates the power of economy, which yields a big impact for little effort. For example, HTML is comprised of tags to ensure that content is displayed in particular styles and positions. In addition, one HTML tag, the anchor tag, is used to link web pages. Web page developers in the early 1990s learned to use the anchor and approximately eight to ten other HTML tags to create the revolution that is the World Wide Web. Please consider this Elegant Instruction in HTML.
Another example of the power of economy in ICT is evident in database commands in the Structured Query Language (SQL). Knowledge of one SQL command, the select command, is sufficient to find patterns in data in any relational database.
One method for learning SQL commands is to enter and run commands in a freely available (and open source) database server, the MySQL server. After a quick download and a gloriously painless installation, guided by elegant instruction, learners would be practicing within fifteen minutes.
Issuing a SQL select Command in MySQL
Viewing the Output
Try it yourself. Here’s my Elegant Instruction in SQL to get you started.