heather zink. a learner.

Tag: Instructional design

  • Lessons Learned: Instructional systems design

    Lessons Learned: Instructional systems design

    The last eight weeks have been both rewarding and challenging as I navigated my first formal instructional design course at UNT. I can wholeheartedly admit that I have a deep appreciation for instructional designers (IDs) and complexities of this role than ever before. I am also excited about using what I’ve learned in this course in my current role as I work to build a team that researches new edtech tools, evaluates current edtech strategies at my university, and develops training materials to support our faculty.

    As the theme of the summer has been one of reflection, both professionally and personally, this post is filled with what I’ve learned, the importance of course material/textbook selection, and where I’m headed next.

    A few lessons learned about instructional design

    1. The development of elearning content is much more complex than the tools convey. I have a knack for grasping edtech tools relatively quickly. It may be because I’m not afraid to click a button or try something out and completely delete it later (no matter how much time it took to create). I’m not sure where this skill comes from, but I’m grateful to have it. This ability to quickly learn a tool, however, did not help me when I was the designer of the learning experience. There is a separate skill set required to examine the content, select the appropriate method for displaying/producing the content, and consider the individual learner’s needs at the same time. I would guess some individuals have both the design and the development skill, but I would argue that in order to create exception courses/training materials that you need a team with the ability to specialize in one or the other. In short, quality instructional design requires a team.

    2. Templates and examples are essential, both for new instructional designers and students in any course. Providing a course design template or instructional engineering document to an ID offers a bit of structure for all the creative energy required to develop a course. It also follows what we know about cognitive processing in that priming the learner through applicable examples can help them move from knowledge to application of the knowledge more quickly. Too much new information overwhelms working memory.

    The same was true in my course development in that new project managers need to see completed project documents from a past project in order to see how their project fits into a similar framework. In short, learning occurs in context (Driscoll, 2002), we must always provide examples and/or templates.

    3. iterate. iterate. iterate. An agile approach to instructional design allows for iteration throughout all stages of the ADDIE model. This is the most valuable lesson I learned this summer. Getting something for the client to look at quickly allows you to make tweaks to the design throughout both the design & development process. It will also ultimately save you time in the development stage in case there is a flow to each module related to structure of the content items. Solidify Module 01 before creating Module 02 — fix it once, as opposed to seven times in seven modules. (I did not do this, but will most definitely do it next time). Rapid design and development will benefit you in the long run. In short, spending more time up front will save you a lot of time later.

    Course resources: Know your audience

    We used Piskurich’s 3rd edition of Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right for the course. I found it helpful in terms of templates for specific types of learning experiences. He shared a fantastic survey tool to gauge learner satisfaction upon completion of the course. However, because of the approach to the writing, I struggled to want to read the text. I wanted less conversational writing and more structure how-to’s. The author spent more time trying to figure out how to give all audiences — from novice to expert — something in his book when his time would be been better spent focusing on one group. When you flip back and forth between introductory and mastery level material, the flow of the text is not helpful to either audience.

    My thoughts on the text may also be clouded by the fact that I developed elearning modules over face2face training. While the author mentioned elearning, the focus of the text was primary for classroom-based course design. Our professor did share the FAO eLearning methodologies book that I found amazingly helpful. The structure of the text focused on core aspects of instructional design that apply across any course/training module, but keyed in on particular aspects to consider for how to chunk content depend on the goals of your elearning module, interactive creating interactive content with various courseware options, and the management of course facilitation depending on learner needs.

    Table of Contents for FAO (2021). E-learning methodologies and good practices: A guide for designing and delivering e-learning solutions from the FAO elearning Academy, second edition. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/i2516e

    The FAO methodologies resource and the iDEA Book by iDesign that I have shared in the past are fantastic tools for instructional designers and faculty designing online courses this fall. They provide both the background on instructional design as well as practical tips and easy-to-follow guidance for utilizing instructional design that benefits individuals at any level of experience.

    The field of instructional design

    I am a learner and an educator. I possess a deep desire to constantly improve and learn everything I can about a given topic, and right now I am most interested in how humans learn and the most effective strategies to help them learn. The field of instructional design captures all my interests and presents opportunities for growth as society changes and new technologies or challenges present themselves. Humans always need to learn something, we are constantly evolving as a species. There is also so much to research and evaluate within the field of instructional design as it relates to elearning and the use of multimedia.

    I am not looking for a new job, I love my team and the direction our work is headed. However, I am grateful for UNT in providing this course with the learning technologies graduate program as it provides a springboard into the ID field that opens doors for students while also providing immediate applicability to their current jobs. As COVID continues to impact our working world, instructional designers will become increasingly valuable commodities to assist corporations and educational institutions in migrating to a more fluid workforce. The lines between home and work will blur permanently. This requires learning across generational boundaries, and instructional designers are just the group to help us navigate this new space.

    As always, thanks for learning and reflecting with me.

    References

    Driscoll, M. (2002). How people learn (and what technology might have to do with it). ERIC Digest, ERIC Identifier: ED470032.

  • Human connections and multimedia learning

    eLearning is now prevalent across K12, higher education, and corporate learning environments. EdTech companies have provided a multitude of options for these various sectors to select the appropriate presentation method for specific audiences. But not all eLearning platforms are created equal, nor do they all follow any sort of cognitive theory for improving learning based on the challenging user experience of some platforms.  EdTech providers and educators alike would serve their customers, i.e. the student/learner, better by considering Richard Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning. Mayer (2017) combined what we know of information processing theory and cognitive load theory, as well as dual coding theory, and applied it to the use of multimedia in the design of elearning experiences. His combination of these theoretical perspectives can assist teachers and instructional designers in crafting easy-to-digest learning units for students.

    Consider these assumptions.

    • Learning takes place in an active state whereby learners are filtering information, selecting specific information, organizing it, and then integrating that information with prior knowledge (information processing theory).
    • There are two separate channels to process information: auditory & visual (dual-coding theory).
    • Each of these channels has a finite capacity for receiving information (Sweller’s cognitive load theory).

    Mayer proposed 12 multimedia instructional principles based off these assumptions as part of his cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2017). These principles are grouped into 3 categories aimed at minimizing extraneous processing (processing needed that is unrelated to the learning objective), managing essential processing (needed to mentally represent the material), and fostering generative processing (making sense of the material).  I’ve been working on a training course using Articulate’s Rise360 platform for the last few weeks, and Mayer’s theory resonated with some of the benefits I’ve found in the platform but also brought to light some areas I need to examine in more depth as we consider revisions to the course. More specifically, the three principles that help to foster generative processing (helping learners to organize and integrate new information into working memory) could be used to improve this course.

    With a focus on generative processing, the human emotional connection to the material improves. Adding an audio component to several instructional widgets improves the encoding of the information. With several audio elements already part of the course, it’s worth reviewing the tone of the audio recording to ensure a personal approach. The personalization principle (Mayer, 2017) tells us that people learn better from multimedia lessons when words are spoken in a conversational style rather than a formal style. I personally relate to this principle as I prefer a more conversational nature to any video I watch, but never knew there was theory and research behind it. Reading Mayer’s 2017 article in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning affirmed my decision to start this degree program with UNT — I have always felt that developing an emotional connection to the material helped me to learn and my students in past courses to retain the material better.

    Appealing to the nature of being human — the connections between people — helps us be better humans and helps us learn. We are meant to go through life with a community, Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning provides evidence that we still want to feel part of a human community even through elearning experiences…an entire research agenda could be developed off this one statement. The voice principle, whereby people learn better when the narration in multimedia lessons is a friendly human voice rather than a mechanical machine voice (Mayer, 2017), confirms my prior experience as well. I think about how using a Powtoon video to draw or write out examples in the training course while speaking to the examples might help with encoding over just providing a picture of a completed example. Helping learners to organize information into existing schemas, connecting the information to prior learned material — this is where the instruction leads to learning and application.

    One final comment on how I might use Mayer’s principles in this training course relate to symbols and imagery. My client is looking to improve the iconography used within the training course to give the material a lasting impression with learners. The course is training individuals on a framework used to organize projects, and the framework contains five phases. Each phase is currently identified using a simple icon. The multimedia principle Mayer explains states that people learn better from words and pictures than just words alone. Adding a word near the icon/image may help with retention of the information in the course. Working with the marketing department or one of the instructional technologists who has experience in graphic design might be a good next step here.

    Future Research

    Even with lessons designed to reduce extraneous processing and activities focused on simplifying essential processing, tapping into the social element of the learning experience is still critical to get learners motivated to continue learning. Mayer’s generative processing principles dig further into this aspect of learning. Social cues in the lessons help the learner to see the instructor/facilitator as a partner. Using voice instruction in a friendly, conversational tone helps the learner develop a social partnership (Mayer, 2017) which can ultimately lead to better outcomes. We can use on-screen agents to increase the social nature of eLearning experiences. And while Mayer has helped get us started, there is vast opportunity for additional research in the application of the lab-designed principles he has postulated. Examining the role of motivation in multimedia learning is an area of interest for me. I need to look further into Moreno’s cognitive affective theory of learning with media.

    Until next time, thanks for learning and reflecting with me.

    References

    Mayer, R. E. (2017). Using multimedia for e-learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 33(5), 403–423.  https://doi-org.libproxy.library.unt.edu/10.1111/jcal.12197