An S-R event is an educational happening. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It occupies a relatively short or relatively long time-slot in the course or lesson to which it belongs. It has its own identity. If necessary you can, for example, temporarily take it out of the course or lesson, clean up any elements in it that are giving trouble, and put it back again. An exercise in problem-solving, a laboratory demonstration, a class discussion of a controversial topic, a lecture, and an educational visit to a jam factory, are all examples of an Sat event.
Up to the moment of working out a design, you have seen the content and activities in the events suggested by the design only as brief, often fleeting, images in the video of your mind. In thinking up a design you must not, in fact, be concerned with detail.
In the task of giving these images concrete (detailed) form, it can be useful to recognise four types of S-R event (Table 4). The first type are events which have to instruct. The second are events which have to explain. The third are events which tell something, and finally, the fourth type are events which let the learner encounter something.
The S-R events in the best courses and lessons have elements of instruction, explaining, telling, and letting encounter in them. This is important for a good Emax Vmax Lmax E’ max score. One of these four elements will be the primary goal of the event and will indicate to which type, A or B or C or D, it belongs. Knowing to which type the St event you are setting up belongs is essential when you are giving concrete form to a thought-up design.
On conclusion of an event which has to instruct, the student must be able to do something which he or she was not able to do at the start. An event which has to instruct has a behavioural objective. If, for example, you are a policeman or woman in Amsterdam, the chances are that you have been instructed in the use of protocol such as is seen in Table 5.
This protocol can be followed when you see a moving or stationary traffic violation. It is designed to minimize the chance of conflict between you and the person involved. At the end of the St event you would be able to demonstrate your knowledge of the steps in the protocol and be able to apply them in a test situation.
An S-R event which has to explain has the responsibility of giving meaning to something. It could be, for example, that in the police training course mentioned above an explanation had to be given of how to react when a traffic-rule violator refuses to give her or his name to the officer. If you have been in an S-R event in which something has been well explained, you will, on exiting from that event, be able to explain to somebody else what has been explained to you.
Table 5: A protocol for use in a ticketing situation
- Decide your end goal.
- Bring to a halt.
- Open interaction.
- Give citizen room to react.
- Make rebuttal.
- Establish identity.
- Gather further particulars.
Events which have to tell have the responsibility of informing the learner about something. The best of these (those whose message you remember long after the event is over) will certainly have the other elements of explanation, instruction and encounter in them.
Some of our richest learning moments are in encounters. These are the S-R, events in which you are confronted with something to which you are invited to respond in your personal, individual, way. An educational encounter has an end goal but that end goal is never directive. In the police course, the police trainees encounter escalation on the streets of Amsterdam in a series of video films. They experience through filmed incidents what sort of things to expect when issuing a ticket for a traffic violation. They react to these incidents in their individual way — both in the privacy of their minds and, later, openly in a discussion with their fellow trainees.
Take a few moments to talk to yourself about instructing someone on what to do when bitten in the ankle by a poisonous snake. Theoretically, the first thing is to restrict the flow of blood to and from the affected limb. The next is cut into the area of the bite with a clean, sharp instrument and suck out the poison.
The third is to pass on critical information and get the appropriate medical help. Snake bite kits are available: would you use one as part of the instruction? What would you think is ‘critical information’ in this context? How quick must you be in doing what has to be done? What sort of end test would tell you that the S-R event you have in mind -has instructed? Isn’t it dangerous to suck snake poison into your mouth? Are all snake bites dangerous? How does the poison work? Anti-serum is produced with the help of a horse: why a horse? An S-R event which has to instruct you in treating a snake bite has lots of things to explain, tell, and let you encounter. It can score highly against the Emax Vmax Lmax E’max formula.