What I want to do when I grow up

The setting I am most interested in is higher education as an instructional designer. I currently work at a community college as an instructional coordinator, which was a recent promotion. Just before that, I was creating online classes for the college and teaching face-to-face classes in basic computer skills. I had previously taught a couple online classes that I didn’t create, but had been created by somebody else in which I felt the classes were not very effective in teaching the content to students. I feel like they had not been developed by instructional designers/technologists. When I asked around the college to find an instructional technologist to interview for this course, I discovered that there weren’t any, only Information Technology professionals. The Director of Distance Education at our college is not an instructional technologist either and is actually a computer hardware technician. Thus, I see a need at our college for somebody to design online courses using the theory and techniques I have learned in EDTC 6010.

When the online classes at our college were created before I taught the classes, some were created from scratch by instructors who were subject matter experts, not instructional designers. Also, most of these classes were previously taught face-to-face. These instructors would create the online classes exactly in the same way they taught their face-to-face classes. I feel there's a big difference in teaching between the two methods. Thus, I feel if I were the college’s instructional designer/technologist, I would redesign these online classes differently and more suitably for online learners, based on what I have learned in this class. I do wonder if other community colleges have the same problem of no instructional designers and use whoever just happens to be there that knows about computers. Or is this just an isolated incident at our community college?

Instructional Media formats

I currently use Smart Board technology in the face to face classroom when teaching computers and early childhood education. I have used it while connected to the Internet to show video from YouTube and interactive PowerPoint slideshows with links to websites and video. In my online classes, I can still use YouTube videos but I think I’ll be using TeacherTube.com more, thanks to the link provided by Dr. Sugar. I spent at least an hour looking around in there after reading about it in the lecture!

I would like to use more podcasting of my lectures in the future along with wikis. When my EDTC lesson plan group created a lesson plan, we used a wiki, which was completely new to me, but would be great to use in an online class. I want to learn more about how to create them and use them for group learning. I teach a Learning Theory class for lateral entry teachers in which I have used a couple Webquests I found on the Internet to teach multiple intelligences and other learning theories, but I would like to incorporate a wiki into the class, similar to what we did in the EDTC class.

ISD & ADDIE

ISD is a planning tool for developing instruction and materials for learners. It helps the instructional designer cover all aspects of the ADDIE model of Assess, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate when planning instruction. There are many different models in ISD and the designer would need to select a model that works best for the learning situation or themselves. The strength of ISD is that no stone is left unturned: the designer will touch on each aspect of ADDIE, sometimes repeatedly in some models. The designer gets the whole view of the process by systematically gathering information and analyzing it in order to determine the learning needs of the learner. Feedback and evaluations then continue the process where it may loop back around to the assessment aspect and start the process all over again. Change is a constant in ISD and it must be repeated to accommodate changes.

A drawback is that it takes time to go through the systematic process of ADDIE, but I believe the strengths outweigh this weakness. It’s better to take the extra time to complete the task to create effective learning than to skip some steps and end up with a sub-par product.

As an instructor, I’m pretty sure I have used ISD to develop my computer classes. I have assessed the needs of my students on the first day of class by asking them if there is anything else they want to learn in addition to the syllabus. I find out what their current knowledge is and start teaching from what they already know. I look for materials, websites and practice and drill lessons for them to complete to learn what they are missing in the needs analysis. Then when the instruction is over, I ask questions about the material or ask them to complete a task to see if they understand what was taught or if they feel comfortable with what they learned in class that day. If they still feel there is a gap or need, then I will search for alternative methods of teaching the new concept. I also like to review at the beginning of the class on what was presented in the previous class in order to reinforce the new concepts learned. From this feedback, I determine if we need to cover the same material again or move on to new material. ISD and ADDIE seem to be an ongoing process.

How do people learn?

I am a HUGE fan of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences (MI) and actually teach MI in a Learning Theory class for Lateral Entry teachers at the community college level. I believe people are intelligent in more than one way, thus learn in more than one way. Therefore as an instructor, I try to offer multiple ways to learn the online course material for my students. There are the usual books, slideshows and paper handouts for the verbal-linguistic learner, but for the interpersonal learner there are discussion boards and chats, for the body-kinesthetic learner, I have assignments where the student will go onsite and interview or observe a classroom or get involved with a classroom. In my computer classes, these learners also get hands-on training on the computer. For the logical-mathematic learner, I offer webquests that are performed in a logical manner to get to the end result. For the intrapersonal learner, I give assignments where the student must reflect on the class or previous assignments to determine what they have learned. For the musical learner, I have added music to my slideshows and added video from YouTube to the online class that usually has music plus helps the audio/visual learners as well. I have not figured out how to reach the spatial or naturalist learners in an online class yet and hope this class will give me some ideas.

I also agree with the constructivist ideas of learning and hope the MI methods will help learners build new knowledge onto their current knowledge of the world through their strongest intelligences.

Instructional Design jobs

A job I found interesting is an Instructional Designer for the University of Arkansas- Sam Walton College of Business on the ASTD job listings website. It is a full time position in Fayetteville, AR with a salary of $40,000-50,000. The employee will be required to develop educational materials for face-to-face as well as online classes. They will report to the Director of Instructional Design but also must work with faculty and other “internal and external professionals”.

The requirements of the position include a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in a “relevant” field but a Masters degree is preferred. The applicant must know instructional design practices and principles and have three years experience in development of technology-based educational materials. They must know Microsoft Office software, course management systems such as BlackBoard, and have experience in “designing blended and/or online courses”. The requirements also suggest the employee must have “proven” ability in working with faculty members and project teams, with minimal supervision and able to meet deadlines.

This is a job I may consider applying for because it’s in academia and very similar to what I do now at the community college level. I would meet the preferred requirements when I graduate. I have had experience creating classes in BlackBoard for faculty at my community college and have used Microsoft Office and BlackBoard for years. I looked at similar jobs in Business and Industry, but they did not appeal to me as much as the ones in academia like this one did.

The URL is http://jobs.astd.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=2971976

Definition of Instructional Technology

For the EDTC 6010 class, I think the definition of Instructional technology is technology used for the purpose of encouraging and producing learning in or outside a classroom. For instance, I use a SmartBoard in my classroom to teach computer concepts by using it as a visual display. This way students can follow what I’m doing on the computer and will know what their computer screens are suppose to display if they are following along. Other examples of instructional technology are using Webquests to assist learning and research on the internet, using podcasts to listen to lectures, and using video to view classmates and teachers in a virtual classroom.

A new blog!

Hi everybody!
I have created this blog for my Internet students to practice with. I look forward to reading comments, suggestions and questions about this class or this blog.