Instructional Design and Development I

Code

IDE 631

Short Course Description

This course acted as an introduction to the Instructional Design Process based upon ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) principles. Students explored the various instructional design stages and worked in groups to develop an instructional unit in a topic of their choosing. The unit plan incorporated each element of ADDIE with an emphasis on the analysis, design, and evaluation components.

Greatest Course Takeaways

This was an integral course to my program of study. It introduced me to the important process of instructional design: ADDIE, or analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. I have since utilized this process in nearly every course that I have planned.

The analysis portion reemphasized the importance of knowing your audience and what they will need to know to be successful in your instruction, whether it is a single lesson or a whole program. This was something I initially neglected when I was still young in the program. The analysis phase can incorporate the skills utilized in the qualitative research courses to better understand the audience to be served, the resources available, and the learning gap to be closed.

The design portion pulled upon knowledge of learning and teaching techniques from other courses as well to create activities and lessons reflective of the knowledge and skills to be learned and the learners working with the material. For example: Social Learning techniques like Observational Learning may be more effective in the learning of physical skills like real-time behavior of a cornerback in a football game. Chaining from Behaviorism might be more effective when learning the stages of properly putting all football gear onto your body for a game. Advanced Organizers from Cognitivism could be helpful for the analysis of a playbook and a specific set of plays for the offensive and defensive gameplan against a specific football team when preparing and practicing throughout the week.

The development portion was important as a reminder that not all materials need to be created by the designer or implementer: found media such as already established texts and videos are just as valid. It was also important to consider what spaces and technology was available for the targeted audience and teachers as well. A plan requiring the use of Hudl software when it wasn't available at the training facility would be ineffective. Creating a plan for implementation was also important, and something I had stepped away from in my own lesson planning and instructional design since most of my work was implemented by myself in the classroom. This is where influences such as scripts and activity outlines from previous courses were beneficial.

The evaluation section pulled in concepts and practices from the courses involving research skills and evaluation. An important point of emphasis on evaluation was not just the evaluation of the participants in the instruction to see if they could achieve the learning objectives, but evaluation of every step of the process - from the questions asked, the materials used, the instructors implementing the activities, the tools utilized for the evaluation, and even the people involved in the ADDIE process.

The concepts from this course are a cornerstone to my work in instruction and educational practices and will continue to be until I retire.

Course Product Description

The course product selected for this portfolio was the final group project for the course. For this project, students worked together to develop an instructional design project proposal for a human performance problem. It was to be developed for more than one or two people who would be receiving the instructional intervention. The performance problem, however, was to be small in scope to allow for the work going into the instructional design plan to be manageable over the course of the semester. The instructional topic should be one that we or at least one member of the group had content expertise in. The proposal needed to describe and support our design rationale and ideas and contain all information necessary to train a team of people in charge of implementing the instruction.

Our group worked on an instructional design plan to teach coaches about learning theory, instructional design, and better ways to help teach and train their football players. This was inspired by a change in personnel on the team regarding both players and coaches. Our plan gave a brief overview of learning to the coaches to help them understand why certain techniques were selected for teaching the younger players various football concepts. Then, the different tools like walkthroughs and white boarding were to be taught to the coaches. The coaches would then have to practice these techniques with each other, and would be evaluated on their implementation of these techniques with their players throughout the football season. The plan involved an analysis of the players, coaches, facilities, and technology available. It was designed to be implemented by a training staff, and a plan of evaluation was also in place to ensure the coaches and the program were successful.

Click Here to See the Course Product for this Course and Others in the Portfolio.

Selection of Product for Portfolio

I included this course product in my portfolio because I wanted to showcase my work with the instructional design process in action. This project taught me that I can help design instruction that is outside the scope of my normal subjects - like science and engineering - by collaborating with a content expert. It also gave me the opportunity to create a plan for others to implement instead of myself, which provided more emphasis on pieces such as materials and storyboards that might not be deemed as important to include if I were to make this plan for myself. It was an amalgamation of many of the concepts and techniques that I learned throughout my other courses in the program. This can be observed throughout different portions of the project report, such as references to peer-to-peer learning and advanced organizers, evaluation plans and tools, and the discovery of a performance gap (which to me, is somewhat like a research question) in which the instruction is designed and influenced by.

This course product outlines each of the important instructional design steps. It looks at the performance gap between where the learners (audience) are at the moment and where we would like them to be based upon this performance expectation. Through design and development, a plan was created to help close this gap. It was also important to include information about training those who would then be training the audience members (in this case, football coaches). Having a plan for evaluation to ensure the program was reviewed and updated as needed was also important.

This course product and what I learned throughout this course provided me with a framework for applying ADDIE and instructional design principles when I am working on instruction of my own. By practicing these skills in the course product, I was able to implement them in my own work as an educator in the professional engineering class that I teach to my undergraduate students.

Contribution of Product to Overall Program

This course product contributes to my overall program because it laid the framework for my perspective on instruction. Instruction is purposeful and attempts to close a performance or learning gap with evidence-based practices and techniques geared towards a specific audience and type of task to be learned (such as physical skills, knowledge, or behavioral/attitude changes). Creating measurable outcomes and a plan to help learners reach and perform those outcomes is crucial. This course product provided me with the background knowledge and skills necessary to create these types of instructional design plans and implement them in the college classroom.

I have pursued this Teaching and Curriculum program to become a better professor in the collegiate science and engineering classroom. Throughout my work in the program, I learned a variety of teaching techniques, qualitative research skills, and tools for evaluation to help me create better lessons, units, courses, and even curriculum. This course and course product on instructional design brought all these aspects together to show me that this is possible at any scale with proper analysis and planning. I can utilize instructional design concepts to make a better curriculum for students in the undergraduate programs, or make more precise lessons that promote student-centered learning and provide measurable outcomes to showcase student success.

So often, professors of old or limited teaching training will simply teach about a subject and follow the topic sequence in a textbook. There are no outcomes or rubrics or performance standards for the students to understand what is expected of them. There is no measure of success for students in a course or in the curriculum as a whole. How are we to know if students truly know the information needed to be successful? How will we know if they are truly prepared for the tasks ahead of them if there is no design towards measuring these sets of skills and knowledge and no thoughtful teaching or instructional experiences that best suit the audience of students in the program and the content to be covered?

It was in this class and through the creation of this course product that I realized that this was one of the contributing factors to my foundational frustrations with the quality of education in collegiate science and one of the motivating factors to my pursuit and completion of this program. Professors need to know how to teach and develop instruction just as much as they need to have subject matter expertise and research skills, yet many fail to exhibit the educational knowledge and skills required of the position. This course and course product showed me just how powerful and important instructional design is to better ensuring student success and the implementation of equitable educational practices.