Gagné’s Nine Events Instructional Design Training Course

Course overview

Learning and Development teams are often asked to convert subject-matter expertise, policy changes, system rollouts, and performance gaps into training that produces observable behaviour change. Too often, courses contain accurate content but lack a deliberate instructional sequence: learners are not prepared for the task, practice is disconnected from workplace decisions, feedback is vague, and transfer is left to chance. This course equips practitioners to use Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction as a practical design method for structuring instructor-led, virtual, and digital learning experiences.

Participants examine each event—gaining attention, informing learners of objectives, stimulating recall, presenting content, providing guidance, eliciting performance, providing feedback, assessing performance, and enhancing retention and transfer—and make design decisions appropriate to business-critical learning. They will write measurable performance objectives, map prerequisite knowledge, select instructional strategies, build practice activities, create feedback criteria, and design assessments that measure job-relevant performance rather than recall alone. The course also addresses when to compress, combine, or adapt the nine events for short workshops, blended pathways, compliance training, and complex capability programmes.

Teaching combines instructor-led analysis, worked examples, peer design critiques, scenario-based workshops, and rapid prototyping. Participants use a supplied design canvas to redesign a real learning intervention from their own organisation or a detailed case brief. They leave with a completed Gagné-aligned lesson or module blueprint, performance objective set, activity and assessment plan, facilitator guidance, and a 30-day implementation plan suitable for review with stakeholders.

The programme is designed for experienced L&D professionals, instructional designers, trainers, HR capability specialists, and subject-matter experts who already create learning but need a more defensible method for sequencing instruction and demonstrating design quality.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Apply Gagné’s Nine Events to sequence a workplace learning session or digital module.
• Write measurable performance objectives using condition, behaviour, and criterion statements.
• Diagnose prerequisite knowledge and design recall activities that connect prior experience to new performance.
• Design attention, content presentation, and learning-guidance strategies for instructor-led and live online delivery.
• Build authentic practice activities with observable performance criteria and structured feedback prompts.
• Create assessment items and practical demonstrations aligned to stated learning objectives.
• Produce a Gagné-aligned lesson or module blueprint with timings, learner actions, and facilitator actions.
• Develop a transfer-of-learning plan using job aids, manager prompts, follow-up practice, and workplace application measures.

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Instructional Designers — who need a repeatable framework for sequencing learning experiences and defending design choices.
• Learning and Development Managers — who oversee programme quality, learning transfer, and design standards across a portfolio.
• Corporate Trainers — who need to turn content-heavy workshops into structured sessions with meaningful practice and feedback.
• Digital Learning Designers — who build e-learning or blended modules and need to translate instructional events into screen-level interactions.
• HR Capability and Talent Development Specialists — who design interventions for role readiness, leadership, onboarding, and performance improvement.
• Subject-Matter Experts — who contribute technical or policy content and need to organise it into teachable, assessable learning.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience creating, facilitating, commissioning, or reviewing workplace learning such as workshops, virtual classes, e-learning modules, or onboarding programmes. They should understand basic concepts including learning objectives, target audience, content sequencing, and formative versus summative assessment. Bringing an existing course, module, or performance problem is strongly recommended because it will be used in design workshops. No prior study of Gagné’s model, formal qualification in instructional design, programming skill, graphic design skill, or authoring-tool expertise is required. Participants will work from templates and examples supplied during the course.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led inputs followed by design studios in which participants apply each instructional event to a workplace learning problem. Facilitators deconstruct examples from compliance, systems adoption, leadership, and operational training, then lead participants through objective writing, activity design, assessment review, and peer critique using a Gagné design canvas. Small groups test alternative sequences for classroom, virtual, and self-paced formats. The final day is an application workshop where each participant refines a real lesson or module blueprint and prepares an implementation conversation for a manager, sponsor, or subject-matter expert.

Course outline

Day 1: The Gagné framework and performance-focused design

• Origins and purpose of Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction
• Distinguishing information delivery from performance-oriented learning design
• The nine events as a learner journey and design checklist
• Analysing business problems, learner roles, and critical job tasks
• Writing condition-behaviour-criterion performance objectives
• Mapping prerequisite knowledge and entry behaviours
• Aligning objectives, evidence of learning, and instructional sequence

Workshop: Participants analyse a workplace training brief and produce a performance map, learner profile, and initial objective set for a selected intervention.

Day 2: Preparing learners and presenting new capability

• Event 1: gaining attention without superficial engagement tactics
• Event 2: communicating performance objectives and success criteria
• Event 3: stimulating recall through retrieval and experience-based prompts
• Event 4: presenting content through worked examples, demonstrations, and chunking
• Event 5: providing learning guidance through scaffolds, models, and decision rules
• Selecting media and interaction patterns for classroom and live online delivery
• Adapting opening events for short sessions, onboarding, and compliance learning

Workshop: Participants design the first third of a lesson, including an attention strategy, objective communication, recall task, content sequence, and learner guidance notes.

Day 3: Practice, feedback, and assessment design

• Event 6: eliciting performance through authentic practice tasks
• Practice progression from guided rehearsal to independent application
• Designing scenarios, simulations, role plays, and case-based decisions
• Event 7: providing corrective, confirmatory, and developmental feedback
• Creating observable performance criteria and analytic scoring rubrics
• Event 8: assessing performance with knowledge checks and practical demonstrations
• Avoiding misalignment between objectives, practice activities, and assessment items

Workshop: Participants build a practice-and-feedback sequence with a scoring rubric and assessment plan for one critical workplace task.

Day 4: Retention, transfer, and blended learning application

• Event 9: enhancing retention and transfer beyond course completion
• Designing job aids, retrieval prompts, spaced practice, and manager reinforcement
• Using near-transfer and far-transfer scenarios in workplace learning
• Compressing and combining the nine events for microlearning and short virtual sessions
• Translating the framework into self-paced e-learning screen and interaction designs
• Using SCORM 1.2 and xAPI evidence to track practice and application activity
• Reviewing Gagné-aligned designs against accessibility and learner-load considerations

Workshop: Participants create a post-course transfer plan containing a job aid, reinforcement schedule, manager prompt, and workplace evidence measure.

Day 5: Design studio, critique, and implementation planning

• Building a complete Gagné-aligned lesson or module blueprint
• Documenting learner actions, facilitator actions, resources, and timings
• Using Articulate Storyline 360 to prototype instructional events and practice interactions
• Using Miro to map lesson flow, stakeholder feedback, and design dependencies
• Conducting peer critique against an instructional alignment checklist
• Preparing stakeholder rationale for instructional strategy and assessment choices
• Planning pilot delivery, evaluation evidence, and design iteration

Workshop: Participants present and refine their completed Gagné-aligned blueprint, then produce a 30-day implementation plan for piloting or building it in their organisation.

Tools & standards covered

Articulate Storyline 360, Miro, SCORM 1.2, xAPI

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions