Instructional Design & eAuthoring Module (Week 1)
The following is a reflection on the week immediately after the class that took place on Tuesday 25th October 2016 using Gibbs Reflective Cycle.
Description
I set up a group on WhatsApp for The Compostivists and invited Allesio Gemma, Michael McKeever and Rachel Maguire to join the group. I think that it is important to use instant messaging if we want our group to be efficient and effective in its work over the coming weeks.
On Saturday 29th October 2016, our group had its first meeting (F2F) in the Westbury Hotel, Dublin 2.
Feelings
It was a productive and happy meeting as can be seen from this photograph:

Evaluation
Here are the minutes of the first meeting of The Compostivists:
Group Members: Allesio Gemma, Gerard Kilkenny, Michael McKeever, Rachel Maguire
Group Project: Composting
Meeting 1 (Date): Saturday 29th October 2016
Meeting 1 (Location): Westbury Hotel, Dublin 2
The following areas of composting will be considered in developing the group’s Instructional Design / eAuthoring project:
- Why compost
- What to compost
- How to compost
- Where to compost (school, house, apartment, etc)
- Science of composting
- Economics of composting
- Best practice composting
- Duration of composting
- Composting versus ‘Black Bin’
- How composting influences retail purchasing choices for the consumer
The group made the following decisions:
- The group name will be ‘The Compostivists’
- Allesio will email the group with a photo of the group taken at this meeting using Allesio’s camera phone.
- Communication methods will include email, Whats App, face to face meetings.
- Mick McKeever will ask Dolores McManus to set up a virtual class for the group in DIT’s Blackboad LMS so that the group can use file sharing, chat, etc.
The group decided to assign the following roles to group members and to organise the group’s work as follows:
Subject Matter Expert (SME): Michael McKeever
Storyboarder: Allesio Gemma
Storyboarder: Rachel Maguire
Authoring Tools Specialist: Gerard Kilkenny
See the following links in relation to the make-up of an eLearning team:
http://elearninguncovered.com/2013/07/e-learning-production-roles/
http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning_design/starting-an-elearning-department/
https://elearningindustry.com/elearning-dream-team-key-players
All members of the group will also have an instructional design role. Articulate Storyline will be used for storyboarding and Adobe Captivate will be used for authoring.
The next group meeting will be in DIT, Kevin Street at 11 am on Saturday 12th November 2016.
Analysis
This was a good first meeting for our group. We decided how the group’s work would be shared out and what roles individuals within the group would have. It is good that we now have a list of areas to be considered for the composting lesson.
Conclusions
The group decided to wait for two weeks to meet again as it will take at least that amount of time for Allesio and Rachel to create the first iteration of the storyboard.
Personal Action Plans
- Now that I have located user guides and video tutorials for Adobe Captivate 9, begin the process of learning to use the different features of this tool.
- Read the following book chapter with a view to writing an annotated bibliography of it. This chapter will also inform the development of the eLearning resource using Adobe Captivate 9.
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011) Applying the Contiguity Principle. In Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E., E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.