Course Requirements
How do I choose a project?
Choosing an appropriate project is crucial to
success in this course. I believe that just about anything can be taught
using the procedures you learn in this course, but clearly some topics and
skills lend themselves to instructional design ideas better than do
others. Use the page of
guidelines for a project to help you narrow down your choices. In
Spring, 2008, the projects will be individual ones.
What is my grade based on?
Your grade is based on three major elements. The
project is the most important, accounting for 150 out of 230 points. This
website describes the project in detail and provides directions for
completing it. Next is the final examination or project. This varies from
semester to semester and focuses primarily on aspects of instructional
design that are not covered well in the project. It counts for 30 points.
Finally, there is a "participation" requirement, measured by
points gained for posting on the discussion boards. You can earn up to
50 points either by posting very good messages (e.g. questions that
others respond to) or by posting lots and lots of less substantive ones.
How will the projects be graded?
The projects will be graded according to a set of criteria found on
this website. If those criteria change at all during the semester, they
will be made more specific and precise, and the changes will be
relatively minor. As always, I will inform you of any changes.
When should I post to the discussion board?
Early and often! I recommend reading the discussion board at least
every couple of days and posting twice a week. If you get behind in
posting, you can do extra the next week, but do not wait until the end of
the semester to fulfill this requirement. Postings done in haste at the end
are not impressive and often do not meet the criterion of being
"substantive."
Do I have to submit my project Analysis Phase for
tentative grading?
No. This is meant as an opportunity for you to get
enough feedback from me for you to see where you stand in your grade. When
I started teaching this course, I sometimes received complaints that
students didn't know their grades until the course was complete. This is a
problem, so I started grading projects after the Analysis Phase was
complete. I will have given you feedback on the content on pieces of the
project already, but this will let you know actual points. It is optional,
however. If you don't want to hand this in, that's your decision and will
not be held against you.
What does the tentative grade mean?
It means that you will get at least that many points
for the Analysis Phase of the final project. At the end of the course, I
will grade all the projects over again from scratch. If you have a
tentative grade on file, then you will either get it or do better. You
will not go down.
Submitting assignments
How do I send an assignment?
Usually, the best way to give me assignments, right
up until you hand in the final version of your project, is to email them
to me. All email systems now allow you to attach files to an email
message. Most of your assignments will be completed in a word processing
program, such as Microsoft Word, so you would create the document, type
and edit, and save it. When it is all finished, I would like you to save
it as a Rich Text Format file and attach that to an email. Please be sure
that your name is in the document and that you use a fairly meaningful
filename. These steps will help me identify what you are sending and whose
assignment I am reading. More information is available at
Submitting Your Assignments.
Note that you could put your entire project on a website of your own and
simply send me the addresses of specific parts.
How do I attach a file to an email?
Usually quite easily, although the procedure may
vary somewhat depending on your email system. See the page on
Submitting Your Assignments
for more information.
Class groups
Are there groups this semester?
In Spring, 2008, the projects are individual ones, and
there will be no formal ongoing groups. There may be groups assigned
temporarily in specific classes.
How do I find out what group I am in?
In the first week or two of class, I will form the groups
based on mutual interests and preferences. I will inform everyone of her
or his group and provide online tools that the group can use to
communicate and collaborate.
How do I find out when my group will meet?
Each group can make up its own work plans and schedules.
There will be tools to allow synchronous online meetings. Some groups
may find that geography allows them to meet in person. If so, please
keep me informed of when you meet and what progress you make. Please
note that it would not be considered collaborative to meet regularly or
frequently with only part of the group present. If individuals can't
make it, then the group should make other arrangements by meeting online
or using a discussion board instead of a real-time meeting.
Why are we doing this?
I'm planning to be a school librarian. Why do I
need this course?
The Library and Information Science and
Instructional Technology programs have discussed this issue and agree that
this course is important for future (or present) school librarians. The
professional societies in the field concur. Why? Because the
librarian/media specialist holds a unique position in a school. You are
one of the few people able to be at the center of instructional and
educational questions, changes, and improvements. Being able to take a
systematic instructional design perspective can help you work with
teachers (individually or in groups) and affect the instructional
directions of the school.
The overall instructional design and development
process
How does this differ from what I already do?
Some of the things in the instructional development
process are already familiar to you, at least on a superficial basis.
Other parts may be partly or completely new to you. Overall, there are a
few clear differences between this process and your usual practice: 1.
this is more systematic, 2. this is more detailed (sometimes
excruciatingly so), 3. you may not have thought about specific pieces
before.
Needs Assessment
How can I gather information about the needs of
my students? I have only a week.
Right, so you have to do the best you can. This
problem is why Needs Assessment is still part of the final
exam/project--we don't have time to do it fully. In fact, at another
university I used to teach an entire course on Needs Assessment and
related topics. Here, you need to take your knowledge of and experience
with the learners and the topic to make the case for there being a need.
If you have access to existing data, that can improve your assignment.
Instructional Analysis
How do I divide my project goal into the major
steps?
This can be difficult at first. There is not
necessarily any single right way to do this. What you are looking for are
the 3-7 major things that people have to do (physically, mentally, etc.)
to accomplish the overall goal. Remember that this is not laying out how
you will teach the goal; it is looking at the goal from the standpoint of
someone who can already do it. The question is What do they do?
Do I have to list every detail of how someone does
the task?
Pretty much, yes. This is an exercise in making sure
that you have covered all the details. As you go deeply into the task,
however, you may find that you have gotten to the point of trivial details
(e.g. "read the letter w" or "move index finger to T key and twitch it").
If you are certain that your audience knows how to do these things, then
you have probably gone deeply enough into that aspect of the task.
Are all projects going to be skills? How about
knowledge and other goals?
Projects do not have to be skills, but it does seem
to be true that, for beginners, the ID process is easiest to apply to
skill instruction. Pure knowledge goals (e.g. state capitals) are not much
fun for either you or the students and require somewhat different
approaches to instructional design. At the same time, most skills,
especially cognitive ones, often require knowledge objectives as well.
Do I have to draw a flowchart?
Not necessarily. The way that you represent your
instructional analysis varies depending on what goals you are analyzing.
The key thing to remember is that the goal here is communication.
You are trying to convey to others (especially to me) exactly what one
does while performing the task in question. This might be done using a
flowchart, a hierarchical diagram, an outline, or in some other way.
What software is available to draw the flowchart?
There are several possibilities. Some people have
done reasonably well with just the drawing tools in Microsoft Word or
PowerPoint. Others have one of the "works" programs, which include more
capable drawing programs. Specialized software for drawing diagrams like
this include Inspiration, SmartDraw, Edge Diagrammer, and others. If you
search for these programs on the Web, you can often find free downloads
(that work for a month or so).
How do I decide what is entry behavior and what I
should teach?
There is no hard and fast rule on this. It depends
on your content and your audience.
How detailed should the analysis be?
Very. I mean it!
Learner Analysis
How can I find out about my learners without
spending weeks on this step?
This can be very difficult. The best ways of
gathering information about learners and their characteristics are
testing, existing records, personal experiences, interviewing teachers,
interviewing the students, and so on. We do not have time to do all of
these things. For our purposes here, you will probably have to rely on
observations and experience for most of your information. If you have
access to existing records such as test scores, use it. Talk to previous
teachers of these students, if you can.
Do I have to do a complete Learner Analysis?
Yes, but "complete" might vary slightly from one
project to another. Those categories in the table are there to help guide
you, but you may find that they don't fit your project perfectly. You
might find that in some of the categories you (1) can't think of any
significant characteristics or (2) can't generate any important
implications from them. In these cases, you can leave that category out
and concentrate on the ones that make a difference.
Context Analysis
What is the difference between the learning context
and the performance context in education?
In education there is often no difference at all,
unless we consider what students will do with the skills once they leave
school. In many cases, however, the performance context is simply where
they do the tests or other assessments, and this may be the identical
classroom where they learned the material. In a case like this, you might
find that you can leave much of the context analysis off. Again, you want
to concentrate on the parts that will make a difference to your
instruction.
Performance Objectives
Do I have to have an objective for each little piece
of the analysis?
Yes. These objectives guide both your student
assessments (including assessing prerequisites) and the design of your
instructional materials. They are needed in this process.
Student Assessment
Do I need a prerequisites test?
Usually, yes. Most goals, when you think about it,
have some sort of entry skills that are needed before someone can
successfully learn the goals and subgoals. The prerequisites test is meant
to measure the readiness of the student to proceed with your instruction.
Do I need a pretest?
Usually yes. The pretest is usually similar or
identical to the posttest. In both cases, you are trying to find out how
much of the material the learners know. The pretest might tell you that
any specific learner does not need the instruction at all. In the case of
this project the pretest is essential for knowing whether anyone benefited
from the instruction when you do the formative evaluation. Sometimes there
are sound practical reasons for not actually using the pretest, of course:
danger to student or equipment, overtesting of students, and so forth.
Should the pretest and posttest be the same?
It depends on what you are teaching. Sometimes they
have to be the same: changing a tire is the same before or after the
instruction. Other times you can keep the structure of the assessment the
same but vary the content: math problems are a good example of this.
Always keep in mind that the goal of the pretest and posttest are
identical: to measure how much someone knows (and can do). The only real
difference is when the assessment is administered.
How do I decide whether to do a test or some other
assessment?
Your objectives tell you this. You should match your
assessments to the objectives. Math, grammar, various standard academic
subjects may lend themselves to paper-and-pencil tests. Other things do
not. We would not assess someone's ability to serve a volleyball with a
multiple choice test or even an essay. The same is true of many other
skills.
Design Document and Instructional Strategies
What is the Design Document?
The Design Document is the place where you present
the blueprint for how you plan to teach the unit that you are designing.
It will cover the instructional strategies, the media, and specific
instructional tactics that you will use. In these projects, the Design
Document may seem somewhat superfluous, since the units themselves are
pretty small. However, when you scale the ID process up to larger
projects, the Design Document becomes essential. Think of building a small
birdhouse without a plan. You might be able to do it, right? Now think of
building a ten-room house. That would be almost impossible, because it is
too large and complex. Well, a multimedia instructional website, covering
a entire college level course is more like the house--large and
complicated. The Design Document provides a blueprint so that you can get
the audio, video, text, quizzes, and everything else you need to make the
instructional website work. The one you are doing is practice for doing
that. This is also a part of the process where I like to encourage
creativity.
What elements are required in the Design
Document?
I like to see several things in a good instructional
Design Document:
- A narrative that lays out (in a paragraph or
two) your general approach to the instruction, including your overall
instructional strategy and the media you have chosen to deliver it.
- A list of the major objectives you will be
teaching, grouped and sequenced.
- A description of how you will teach each group
or cluster of objectives, using either the nine events of instruction
(Gagne's approach, as covered in the PowerPoint presentations on this
site, both narrated and unnarrated). Again, this
should be done for each group of objectives.
Do I have to teach the parts of my topic in any particular order?
You will have to make decisions about what order you
will teach the various objectives and subobjectives in your project. These
decisions are part of developing your instructional strategy. Depending on
your topic, your audience, and your setting, you could use a variety of
sequences for your instruction. Sequences include chronological, backward
chaining, learner-controlled, whole-to-part and part-to-whole,
simple-to-complex, and many others.
Do I have to teach each objective separately?
No. Although the old behaviorists did it this way,
we rarely do so now. Instead, we cluster (group, chuck, etc.) the
objectives and teach several together. The basis for this clustering is
the interaction of the goals of the instruction and the learners. For
example, physics
is generally regarded as a difficult subject, but advanced graduate
students can handle large chunks of it at once, where high schoolers may
have to be taken through the concepts step-by-step. Other topics might be
easy for us but have to be broken down much further for young children.
What are the Nine Events of Instruction?
Based on cognitive psychological theory and research
of his time, Robert Gagne postulated that we needed to do nine things
externally in order to increase the probability that learners would
process information and learn things internally. The nine external events
that should occur in teaching are
- Gain Attention
- Inform the Learner of the Objectives
- Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning
- Present Stimulus Material
- Guide the Learner
- Elicit Performance
- Provide Feedback
- Assess Performance
- Enhance Retention and Transfer
These are presented in this order but may sometimes
be done in other orders. They need to be present for each cluster of
objectives that you are teaching. Clearly, they still present a great deal
of room for variation and creativity in how you accomplish each one.
Materials Development
Are you (the instructor) going to review my
materials before I try them out with students?
No, there really isn't time. I'd rather have you
spend the time using the unit with students than waiting for me to respond
to you. Besides, by the time you are at this point, we both know whether
you are on the right track.
Do I have to have a self-instructional unit?
The standard project for this course is a
self-instructional unit that takes your audience about an hour to complete
(no, it doesn't have to be done all at once, though). There may be good
reasons to have a teacher-led unit instead. Here are two possible reasons:
1. the audience doesn't read well enough to do a self-instructional unit
or 2. the content and instructional strategy need a person there to do
things like assess student responses. Please use the Design Document to
tell me this kind of thing so that I can comment on it.
What is a self-instructional unit?
This means that you can hand the materials to the
student and reasonably expect them to get through the unit without anyone
else helping. At least that's the goal. It might not happen in the first
tryouts, but that's what the Formative Evaluation is for.
Formative Evaluation
How do I do the Formative Evaluation for my
project?
We are doing the first type of formative evaluation
for these projects: the one-on-one tryouts. In these tryouts you will need
to try out the instruction on only three members of your target audience.
You should do them one at a time, unless your design requires groupwork.
You should test your learners, give them the instructional materials and
observe them as they use them, taking good notes. You ARE allowed to help
out if someone gets stuck, rather than let them flounder, but make sure
that you note the problems carefully. At the end, you should give the
learners the posttest. The test scores, your notes, and comments from the
learners provide the data for your evaluation. More information can be
found in a page on
conducting
your tryout.
In the tryout, am I allowed to help the students if they can't
do something in the lesson?
Yes, especially in this first round of tryouts. It
is better to help the students over the rough patches and have them finish
than to leave them hanging. Try not to jump in too soon, and make sure you
document what you did in the FE report. Presumably having to help the
students would lead to Revisions.
Revisions
When I identify things that have to be changed
during the Formative Evaluation, do I have to make those changes before
handing in the project for grading?
No. All I ask you to do is tell me what the changes
will be in your Formative Evaluation and Revisions Report. You do not
actually have to go back and make the changes. The reason is that we
simply do not have time.
Summative Evaluation
Are we going to do a Summative Evaluation of our
projects?
No. We will discuss Summative Evaluation in class,
but we do not have the time to complete this step.
The Final
Project/Examination
Will the final examination be comprehensive?
No. It covers only those parts of the ID process that
you do not do completely in the project.
What do I have to study for the final examination?
The things not covered fully while doing the project
include needs assessment, media selection, formative evaluation and
revisions, summative evaluation, and future directions of instructional
technology and instructional design. See the
page about the final for objectives
and examples.
Why do you call it a project/examination?
Although I used to give an exam that took most people
about an hour, an online course does not lend itself to that. I have been
experimenting with various other ways of assessing your knowledge in these
areas, including small individual and group projects. I will give your more
information as the course progresses.
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