Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences. Best of luck with your important work developing instructional approaches for lifelong learning skills. The field of instructional design will surely benefit from your continued contributions.

1. Jeroen J. G.
van Merriënboer
LDT Leader & ID Model Designer
Presented by:
The LBK Group
Flint Buchanan, Katrina Lowrey, Larry McCalla & Brian Wrenn

2. Why is Jeroen a Great
LDT Leader?
• He specializes in cognitive architecture
and instruction, instructional design for
complex learning, holistic approaches to
instructional design, and adaptive e-
learning applications.
• He has published over 100 scientific
articles in the area of learning and
instruction theory, and lifelong learning .

3. Jeroen, a great LDT Leader
continued . . .
• His main area of expertise is
learning and instruction, in
particular instructional design and
the use of new media in
innovative learning environments.
• He has published widely on four-
component instructional design,
cognitive load theory, and lifelong
learning.

4. 4C/ID Graphic Model
• Learning Tasks are authentic experiences that begin with high JIT
Info which is gradually reduced.
• Supportive Info provides the non-recurring aspects of learning
task, and is the foundation on which the task is based.
• JIT Info are the recurring aspects that become automatic responses
and can be gradually reduced.
• Part-time Practice provides additional practice for recurrent skill
until they become automatic.
*We found Merriënboer ‘s diagram of the 4C/ID Model a little confusing, so we created a more visual diagram.

5. The LBK group contacted Jeroen via email
and asked him the following questions . . .
1. Will you relate a personal anecdote that
guides your relationship with instructional
design and technology? An experience that
helped form your current view of
instructional design and technology?
2. How were you inspired to enter the field?
3. Are there any trends in the field that are
particularly exciting for you? Media,
learning environments?
4. What advice do you offer new students in
the field of instructional design?

6. Will you relate a personal anecdote that guides your relationship
with instructional design and technology? An experience that
helped form your current view of instructional design & technology?
The first instructional design project I conducted was also my
PhD project. The aim was to develop instructional strategies
for teaching computer programming (very popular in the early
1980's). I studied and evaluated existing computer
programming courses and was actually shocked by how
ineffective they were. Most courses taught the 'commands' of
the programming language one by one.
At the end of the course,
participants often had never
seen a complete, working
computer program and were
certainly not able to design
and write a computer
program on their own.

7. continued . . .
I started to study instructional design models in the hope that
they would help me to design more effective courses (mostly
the models described in the 1983 book edited by Charles
Reigeluth). But to be honest, I found these models of very little
help. It was then that I decided to develop a more holistic
approach to instructional design. For my PhD, I developed and
developed the so-called "reading approach" for teaching
computer programming: students start with reading and testing
existing computer programs, then complete missing part of
computer programs, and finally
had to develop and write
computer programs on their own.
Many of these ideas (importance
of real-life examples, backward
chaining etc.) can still be found in
my current work.

8. “Many of these ideas (importance of real-life
examples, backward chaining etc.) can still be
found in my current work.”
• Full professor of Learning and
Instruction and Research Program
Director, Department of Educational
Development and Research / School of
Health Professions Education,
Maastricht University.
• Scientific director of the
Interuniversity Centre for Educational
Research, a collaboration of ten Dutch
universities offering a joint course
program for PhD students in
educational sciences.
And that current work is . . .

9. How were you inspired to enter the
field?
Actually by accident.
After completing my studies in
cognitive and biological psychology at
the University of Amsterdam I could
not find a job (in the early 1980's there
was a serious economic recession in
the Netherlands).
I moved from Amsterdam to the
University of Twente because they
offered me a job as a research
assistant in the (by then new)
department of Applied Educational
Sciences.

10. Are there any trends in the field that are
particularly exciting for you? Media, learning
environments?
• I am now particularly interested
in instructional design
approaches for the teaching of
self-directed learning skills,
lifelong learning skills, 21st
century skills etc.
• Due to rapid changes in jobs and
technologies, such skills are
becoming more and more
important.

11. continued…
• Yet, there are almost no systematic instructional
design approaches for teaching such skills.
• I think it is of particular importance to develop
approaches for the combined/integrated teaching
of first order, domain specific skills and higher
order skills.

12. What advice do you offer new students in
the field of instructional design?
• Instructional design is an eclectic science
which borrows from basic sciences such as
psychology, sociology, economics, computer
science etc. My advice to new
students would be not to limit
themselves to instructional
design, but also study one or
more of the more basic
sciences that can help to
further develop and strengthen
the field of instructional
design.

13. Dr. Merriënboer (not smiling).