Session 2: Response to Prompts

Session 2

Your blog post assignment this week is to address each of the following three scenarios in light of the information presented in the podcast and then discuss your the instructional design process described in chapter 1 of our text. Then you will be asked to reflect on a development project of your own and identify the steps in an instructional design process presented in the text.

1. Scenarios

To address these scenarios, identify the major characteristics or issues that would impact or influence the design of the described online class. Be sure to indicate which of the characteristics you identify would be your prime concern. Also be sure to indicate how each of the major issues you identify would influence your design of the online class.

You have been asked to lead the team that is developing a series of courses for an online University. Explain some design decisions or issues that you would have to deal with for each class given the characteristics of the content, instructors and students as presented. Note: Pick the most salient characteristics and issues and explain why the ones you have chosen are key. Don’t try to cover every possible issue in each scenario!

Course A

Content: This course will cover beginning college algebra.

Instructor(s): This course is taught by various adjunct and full time professors who are very familiar with the content who have differing degrees of tech skills and online teaching experience. The same class has to serve for all instructors.

Students: All students in this course are college freshman and sophomores with good technology skills and each has successfully taken an online orientation to online learning course.

Response:

Category	Ranking
Students	2
Instructors	1
Content	3

 As the course is a mathematics course, a convergent material, I am not most concerned with the material. It is a subject matter that lends itself well to the designer establishing a logical progression of topics, procedures for students and instructors to follow and provides for ease of feedback as far as correct vs. incorrect answers go.

As each of the students in the course has good technology skills and has successfully completed an online orientation to online learning course I do not count them as the biggest area of concern for the course preparation. Since they have not completed multiple online courses successfully, I would be sure to build in some more frequent assessments to provide feedback throughout the course to ensure their participation.

My biggest concern as the designer is the set of instructors. Since the same course has to work for every instructor, regardless of their previous experience with online courses (teaching and methods), technology skills and comfort level with these skills and taking risks and for their preferred type of interaction with students, I need to design something adaptable. To that end I think it important that the course be a pre-packaged course that in and of itself will serve to cover the material. Then, to allow for the comfort of all instructors, I’d leave the access to customizing the material and to additional or alternate assignments/assessments open so that instructors with a higher level of technological comfort or risk taking personality could make the course more to their tastes.

Course B

Content: The course is a philosophy of leadership class.

Instructor(s): The instructor is an experienced face-to-face instructor with good tech skills and prior online teaching experience. This instructor prefers lecture and discussion classes.

Students: Graduate students who are well motivated and with a broad range of technology skills, from average to very advanced.

Response:

Category	Ranking
Students	2
Instructors	3
Content	1

 As the instructor is an experienced instructor with good tech skills and prior online teaching experience, he is my 3^rd priority. This excellent foundation means his/her comfort level with what is designed should be high and new things would be interesting; not just another thing in a series of brand new items for him/her to juggle. I would feel comfortable designing a few weeks ahead as it shouldn’t bother them.

The students for this particular course, in and of themselves, are also not my main concern. They are motivated and have good technology skills. I ranked them second, however, because I do not know if they have any previous online classroom success and this particular course, a divergent material with multiple answers, can be difficult for them as I’ll need to ensure that they have a chance to synthesize their own, individual approaches and solutions to the material/problems presented.

My biggest area of concern in design is the content. The philosophy of leadership does not have a series of procedures that can be set for students to follow; there is no one right answer and it will be key that the material is set such that there is plenty of opportunity to discuss ideas. Structured participation where the students interact with each other and the ideas of the course, where the solutions of each person are valued based on the structure and strength of their understanding will be key to success here.

Course C

Content: This course is an introduction to college success. It teaches study skills, communication skills, and tries to help students learn how to fit into the college community.

Instructor(s): This course will be taught by various instructors all with good tech skills and prior online teaching experience but who have never taught this content before.

Students: Students are incoming freshman who have been identified by advisors as high risk for drop out.

Response:

Category	Ranking
Students	1
Instructors	2
Content	2

The instructors and content will both be important (though in secondary importance) considerations in the design of this course. While the instructors all have solid technology skills and prior online teaching experience, this is all new content to them which is going to raise their stress level as the teach the course. I would, therefore, take a similar approach to Course A in design and make sure that a pre-packaged course is available but with much more customizability built in as these instructors have a strong foundation upon which to build.

The content will also be of importance, though once again secondary. This particular material has portions that would fit the convergent style of coursework (study and communication skills could be demonstrated with procedures to follow and an externalization of an internal dialog so that students have a set methodology to follow as they learn), while the learning to fit into a college community aspect would be more divergent with people being able to find their niche through multiple pathways and where each student would have their own definition of success at what “fitting in” would mean.

The students in this particular course would be of greatest concern to me. I see no evidence of previous successful online coursework and as they have already been identified as high-risk drop outs, I am duly concerned about their motivation. It is critical that I keep them engaged and build mini-successes for them throughout the course so that they can really benefit from the coursework and from the connections they can make with both their teacher and their class peers.

2. Now, think about an online learning experience that you might someday create. Describe in detail the content, instructor and student characteristics. What are the design issues or features that these suggest? Explain your answers.

Response:

Course Mine: Honors Algebra 2

Content: Building on their work with linear, quadratic, and exponential functions, students extend their repertoire of functions to include polynomial, rational, and radical functions. Students work closely with the expressions that define the functions, and continue to expand and hone their abilities to model situations and to solve equations, including solving quadratic equations over the set of complex numbers and solving exponential equations using the properties of logarithms. The five main units are:

·           Polynomial, Rational and Radical Relationships

·           Trigonometric Functions

·           Modeling with Functions

·           Inferences and Conclusions from Data

·           Applications of Probability

Instructor: The instructor would originally be me, but ultimately, the goal for this course would be that it could be moderated by any instructor in the district (Palm Springs Unified) that has the subject matter expertise. With that in mind, the instructor should be described in the same manner as Course A that we discussed in the weekly work: This course is taught by full time professors who are very familiar with the content who have differing degrees of tech skills and online teaching experience. The same class has to serve for all instructors.

Students: The students this course is targeted to reach would be students (most likely 9^th graders who will be 10^th graders in the following year or 10^th graders who will be 11^th graders in the following year) who for one reason or another would like to advance through Honors Algebra 2 over the summer to enable them to take Honors Pre-Calculus in the following school year. To engage in the course, they would need to be recommended by their previous math teachers as not only having excellent base math skills (Algebra 1 particularly), but they would also need to be motivated, hard workers and have access to the technology components necessary to complete the online course. (Library access would be fine, but they need to have a prepared plan of attack to participate.)

Design Considerations:

Content: The great benefit to this course targeted to high school students is that mathematics, even at a higher level is a convergent material set which allows for one correct answer and even with a variety of solution paths, they are not infinite and a problem usually lends itself toward one methodology for ease of work.

Students: As they are high school students with no expected previous completion of online course work, I would still expect them to have frequent structured interactions of some sort through discussions in a discussion board with the other students and the instructor. I would expect the instructor to have weekly online or in class office hours to answer the questions that the students will invariably have as they progress through the coursework. This provides an extra measure of support in recognition of the fact that as motivated as theses students are, this will most likely be their first online experience.

Instructors: As the instructors will have a high level of subject matter expertise and no expected level of technological skill, I would expect this course to be pre-built before students enter in to the first week. As this course would be projected for use in the K-12 educational system, I would expect a high level of administrative oversight in its planning, implementation, operation and completion. The state of California also has minimum numbers of hours required for interaction with the material and it would have to be demonstrated in the coursework plan that students (regardless of the summertime completion) had been engaged in at least 160 hours of coursework to guarantee that they receive credit for their work. Moreover, as the proposed course is for honors students, it would be expected that the completed coursework expectations be made available to all high school math teachers in the district well before roll out so that suggestions for alterations or requirements be adjusted before students have a chance to interact with the material. I would expect all of this oversight to keep the course (at lease in its first few years) looking very traditional. I would expect many lecture type videos and lots of worksheet style or traditional textbook problems to pop up because they are “tried and true” methods. After a few years, I would expect to be able to adjust some of the coursework to reflect a more constructed knowledge on the part of the students, but only in a supporting way.

3. List the 11 instructional design steps presented in chapter 1 of the text (Design Quickly and Reliably).

11 components of design from the text:

1)   Identify your underlying goal
2)   Analyze learners’ needs and abilities
3)   Identify what to teach
4)   Set learning objectives
5)   Identify Prerequisite
6)   Pick the approach to meet each objective
7)   Decide the teaching sequence of your objectives
8)   Create objects to accomplish objectives
9)   Create tests
10) Select learning activities
11) Choose media

I went to the E-learning by Design website staffed by William Horton and company. They have several examples of courses they have designed available for anyone to have a look at if they have the interest.

The list is at: http://www.horton.com/portfolio.htm

I found the examples under courses and lessons to be the most interesting to me. I watched a few and tried to pick out where they had done or responded to each of their own 11 steps. My favorite was:

http://www.horton.com/portfolio/CriticalPath2010/index.html

Here are 3 example slides from my favorite (link above):

   1)   They identified their underlying goal. Slide 1… boom!

2)   Clear cut listing of their objectives.

3) Create tests: can be small or big, but let's build some confidence!

Check it out!

Michelle