Instructional Design and Development II
Code
IDE 632
Short Course Description
This course examined the depiction and application of Instructional Design principles using design models. Systems theory was used to identify scenarios in which models were to be developed. Various instructional design models were examined for inspiration into the development of a model for a student-chosen system and scenario. Students constructed their own instructional design models as the final project of the course.
Greatest Course Takeaways
This course was the culmination of many of the classes and projects in my program. There were a few important aspects that I took away from this course. Utilizing systems theory in the case of designing instruction and instructional design models was like a converging of two worlds for me. Systems and creating boundaries around a scenario is often utilized in engineering, especially in fundamental courses like mass and energy balance. To think I could do the same for the lessons I am planning, the courses and curriculum I am making, and the overall performance gaps I aim to close with instructional design was mind blowing. It truly converged two aspects of my education. This concept and the idea of instructional design in general is one of the reasons I refer to myself as an educational engineer. I am creating these experiences and opportunities for students to learn in a purposeful way, while still allowing flexibility for spontaneous learning and discussions as well. It was such a satisfying realization to reach in my educational training and program.
Another important aspect of this course was model development and how I could use various models and aspects of instructional design to make one of my own (which is the course product I selected for this class). Creating models is an important means of communicating to a target audience as it can showcase many components of your system at once and creates a visual representation of what is occurring. Being able to review different models that already exist and pull concepts from the literature to make your own creation was both important and exciting. It has built my confidence in being able to utilize models to explain instructional design plans and concepts (or just information in general) to others in the future. I feel this is very important for my work in collegiate education and instructional design. If I am to enact change in academia, I need comprehensive but easy to understand methods of communicating my ideas to others to share information and get them on board with a new teaching technique or curriculum plan. Utilizing my skills from this course to make informative models will be important to reaching these goals in the future.
Course Product Description
The course product that I selected for this portfolio is the final project for the class. This project required students to create an Instructional Design Model - or more specifically, an Instructional Systems Design Model - that fit a specific context defined by the student. The model was to be accompanied by documentation that showed the various stages through which an instructional development project would progress. It should describe the development team or developer activities at each stage. It should also include a rationale and recommendation of tools, instruments, and procedures for each component of the model. Evaluation components and criteria were also necessary.
My model involved the system of the undergraduate paper engineering curriculum at my college. This included its various inputs and influencing factors (such as SUNY and College standards, ABET accreditation standards, program outcomes, professors, students, funding agencies, industry representatives, etc.), the outputs of industry-ready graduates and information products, and the sub-systems of course sequences within the curriculum system itself. The model was created to enact a system of continuous curriculum improvement utilizing instructional design processes, teaching techniques, and professional development of faculty and staff involved.
Click Here to See the Course Product for this Course and Others in the Portfolio.
Selection of Product for Portfolio
I selected this course product for the portfolio because it is one of my favorite pieces of work to come out of my Teaching and Curriculum program. It showcases my ability to apply instructional design concepts and create a model that can be implemented in a setting I am very familiar with: a collegiate science and engineering undergraduate program. Throughout my studies, as was shown in various other pieces of reflection of my courses and course products, I grew frustrated at the undergraduate paper engineering curriculum that I participated in and that didn't seem to have improved much at the time of making this model. I picked this context for my course project because I truly wanted to see if I could apply my knowledge and skills from this program to create a plan that could be used to improve the academic experience for students in the department.
This particular system has many stakeholders and moving parts, with both general and program-specific courses within the course curriculum network. It was important that I consider these moving parts, industry expectations, as well as faculty resistance towards the plan as it would require change in the way the professors practiced their teaching and course development. It would also involve more communication between professors of courses within the curriculum and professional development to train professors in these instructional design topics. This type of change can be scary. It was crucial that I considered this and a diffusion plan (a concept learned in this course for the spreading and accepting of new ideas) that would allow professors to ease into the process one lesson at a time and to witness evidence-based results of other professors employing these new educational techniques in the classroom. It was important to show the professors what level of training was needed to participate in each stage of the curriculum improvement process displayed in the model as well to better prepare them for what was expected of them at each stage. Evaluation of what the professors learned from professional development and implementation of new teaching practices, as well as evaluation of each stage of the curriculum improvement model and how professional development was handled was another important step to keep the model and process just as up to date as the curriculum would hopefully become.
All of the work in this course product shows an emphasis of considering audience and knowledge and skills to be taught that was lacking in my early works. I am truly proud of this model and hope that someday, I can implement it in my own department to improve how we serve our students.
Contribution of Product to Overall Program
This course product is the final piece of my Teaching and Curriculum program (other than this portfolio!). One of my motivators for enrolling in the Teaching and Curriculum program and pursuing this degree was to become a better teacher than those I had in the past. I wanted to improve the student academic experience, initially through more effective teaching strategies and techniques. That evolved into a love of instructional design from this course and the course prior in the sequence (IDE 631: Instructional Design and Development I) that I learned to apply to any scale - from the lesson to the curriculum. With this final course product, I was able to create a plan of action towards improving the curriculum in my own department (though the model was generalized enough to be applied to other departments as well). This course product allowed me to practice instructional design skills and gave me the confidence to pursue work in the curriculum portion of my Teaching and Curriculum program.
This course product contributes to my overall program of study because it brings together many of the knowledge and skills I acquired through other classes in the program. It provided an opportunity to apply the instructional design concepts of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation to a relevant context: the specific context of the undergraduate engineering program that initially inspired me to pursue this degree. It forced me to reflect upon my own understanding of the collegiate academic context and of my knowledge and skills in instructional design.
In the beginning, I struggled quite a bit with this course product. I struggled to grasp how I could make a model in a systems context that could help address the performance gap and implement instructional design concepts both in the process of making the model and in the model itself, as I knew that teaching about instructional design was a required aspect of my context of curriculum improvement. I knew I had to take the ideas I learned from the level of the lesson and be able to incorporate them in some way to eventually lead to the much grander scale of curriculum. This combination of teaching, curriculum, and instructional design was showcased in this course product. My overall program goal was to learn more about teaching and instructional design to become a better instructor and advocate for change in the collegiate science classroom and in academia for my students. This course product showed that I am capable of devising a plan to do that while considering the various factors within my college context to achieve this. It gives me confidence that I have learned enough about teaching, curriculum, and instructional design to make a difference once I am in the field of academia as a professor someday.