Johnson's Blog

Week 14

My reflections regarding the ID final projects consist of mostly followup questions to the contributors -
Yuri's Calculus Crash course - I was curious about the gender implications of the imagery and if this was calculated in relation to a learner's analysis.
Paul's Computer conference tutorial: I like the idea of creating more instruction for the 3 different presences: social, cognitive and teaching. I thought that the teaching/leadership has linkages with industry elearning studies on the role of virtual facilitator. I thought the discussion of argumentation was interesting for additional research - but would have to say that I expected this element in my postgraduate coursework in NZ and it didn't happen - so there is a level of myth operating sometimes I think. However, there are different facilitations in other cultures that are worth considering as resources. There are two aspects that need to be considered in designing for online discussion -1. is teaching the learning structure, 2nd is teaching ways of facilitating discussion - they can be very different.
Jennifer's Healthy website: I thought that I'd like to compare elearning industry games with theirs for points of difference in instructional design.
Cheryl's French language site: I was reflecting on Cheryl's comment that Target relies on use of templates and wondering if she felt that this now infuences how she designs other sites for depth/navigation?
Theano's Greek language site: via personal experience, I feel there's a powerful difference between academic and immersion methods of learning a language - and I wondered if this pointed towards use of more risk elements in the games design for educational language sites.
Kristine's polarhusky tutorial: I'm looking forward to seeing this - and thought the question re updating mechanisms was helpful.
Virginia's job aid site: I wondered if there was any research into library assoc use of databases for knowledge management - they have developed extensive standards, structures etc and it could be useful in the early design of her site?

Week 13

Re: ID presentation on Activity Theory and ID presentation on Bandura:
I guess these two make me uneasy…I need to follow up on the reading/resource links for these approaches. They are of interest because they seemed to echo a theoretical framework for cultural studies, postcolonial studies etc in their earlier days – and consequently was referred to by contemporary artwork then (and now). What followed was much hand wringing about the implications of behavioral modification because of this ‘institutional/theoretical’ application to learning activity… not to mention the feminist discussion of the role of the consultant/mentor vs facilitator.
Re the Good/Bad Design presentations, I’m not sure where these are contributing except to point to the need for a design model like the one presented in the text- i.e. the need to continually revisit each phase.

Week 12

No class

Week 11

Class discussion of Chapter 12 – the Professional Designer:
For the possible roles for instructional designers and what is their value?
We came up with: project coordination, course facilitator, webmaster.
It was interesting to share the different experiences of ID work – it would be helpful to spend more time on this discussion.
Alessi & Trollip ID model – I found the visual for this confusing in terms of thinking of it as a business model – but on reflection, I can see where the planning stage is the emphasis for this model. Aspects like getting a style guide up front etc., knowing the scope and constraints is definitely the business model approach.

Week 10

The ID presentation on Merrill: re ‘start with content 1st, not the objectives because it’s more efficient’ this hasn’t been my experience as stated in earlier blogs, so I found this ID method abit confusing. What interests me the most is the idea of increased/decreased scaffolding in this model. I can see it’s contribution to reusable units in elearning structures.

Week 9

Chapter 11 was a good chapter for building awareness of the return on investment discussions in instructional design, particularly the project costs/index at the end of the chapter. I’m really enjoying the design templates in this text for the way they revolve the structures each time for considering the sets of questions in a different perspective.
I found the Kilpatrick ID Model interesting because it is a framework applied to studio/design art instruction – and is becoming more focused on collaborative efforts in more recent years.

Week 8

Chapter 10 discussed the demonstration phase of design – ie the storyboard/prototype. This is the phase that I enjoy giving 100% time to because of the requirement to meet/address a client’s expectations visually…and give added value. It tests the designer’s symbolic skills. It’s like a really good advertising design for the methods required to address the mental picture, give a solution, and close the gap. And you can always tell when it didn’t quite get there because the client’s feedback is full of confusing modification requests. This chapter was helpful for suggesting some structuring devices for getting early feedback.

Week 7

I think that audience, content, environment, objectives, etc. do influence to some extent whether I decide to apply behaviorist, objectivist, information processing, constructivist, constructionist, post-modern, critical theory, etc. methodologies in my instruction. It certainly has to be considered upfront in the instructional design. I’ve taught art history to visual art students and to 2nd yr medical students. What I thought would work in one situation did not work with the other. The visual arts students were accustomed to a constructivist approach to learning. The med school students were used to the behaviorist approach - they wanted a prescriptive program and assessment of the topic. This experience seemed to invert the question I often had with art students – i.e. do I teach them the basics….and the med students – do I teach them how to learn from the learning experience?

Week 6

The role of evaluation in each phase of the design process is twofold: assessing the effectiveness of the sum total at each checkpoint and measuring the input of each element for it’s contribution.

An internal review is done by the design team, the external review is done with the learner feedback and expert review is assessment by the SME’s. Each one has a different perspective and different criteria – but all three need to evaluate in terms of the objectives of the project.

One justification for conducting an evaluation is to get an agreement from the client regarding the methodology. This assumes of course that you are not seeing evaluation as a stage that occurs at the end of the project.
Case study (Gonzales) this week was an interesting look at the importance of knowing what is being evaluated: who is doing it and why, what do their results tell about their methods?

Week 5

The key points of Chapter 5 are delivery context, delivery mode, media/activity selection and interactivity.
My experience with the import of these key points was making the transition as a lecturer from the traditional ‘podium’ style/lecture theatre to using Powerpoint to structure my lectures. This shift significantly changed the dynamics of my classroom in terms of student interactivity and required a complete rethink of content chunking. At times, I’ve wondered if depth and analysis suffer in this process, however I think that more student needs are addressed with a multimedia presentation. One drawback was that I usually was so busy getting a Powerpoint lecture organized with existing content that I didn’t have time to concentrate on the other 50% of the instructional design – ie the resources, assessment, interaction. I think that this is because at university level, we get away from writing formal lesson plans. This lack of structure makes it difficult to transfer content to a different mode of presentation – but the exercise of doing so helps to refocus the goals of the instructional design. Therefore, I couldn’t really say that I’d utilized the potential of the medium or utilized an effective instructional design. One thing that I have noticed over the past years is that students seem to have lost the stamina to sit through a prepared lecture – simply because they are so used to ‘bit-size’ presentations in so many other environments.

5 questions I’d like to ask an instructional designer are
How is your role seen in the company?
Do you ever feel like you have a realistic timeframe to work with?
How do you build a product in a way that anticipates growth?
What drives your decisions regarding chunking content?
What is your relationship with SMEs?
Sequencing instruction seems to me to be the core of any instruction. I’m looking forward to the models for insights on the possibilities for sequencing.
I thought that case study 8 this week brought out an important issue – do we as instructional designers work more often offering a diagnosis or a mediation?
Case study 9 was interesting in terms of current issues such as No Child Left Behind – there is more frequently a gap in the involvement of teachers in management decisions - and this seems to compound as a problem with technology drives the management’s solution.
These case studies are interesting, but we don’t seem to get to discussion of the instructional design because we spend too much time reviewing the details of each case study.