Instructional Design & eAuthoring Module (Week 3)
The following is a reflection on the Tuesday morning class that took place on 8th November 2016 from 10:00 to 13:00 using Gibbs Reflective Cycle.
Description
According to the hard copy Module Handbook 2016/17, today’s class was to address the following topics (and to include the guest lecturer Clare Gormley as well as Library colleagues):
- eLearning Toolkit and reflection on experience as a past graduate(Clare Gormley)
- Defining learning outcomes, defining activity within a resource
- Using the Library for your annotated bibliography (Library colleagues)
- Group elevator pitches (5 mins each)
In reality, the topics for today’s class were:
- Personas
- Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Learning Outcomes?)
- The Universal Design Process
- Models for Learning Design (ADDIE and the 7Cs)
- The most important components of learning
All of the five topics were dealt with by Damian Gordon and none were delivered by Pauline Rooney.
eLearning Toolkit and reflection on experience as a past graduate was not dealt with today. Clare Gormley did not appear today nor was any reference made to her.
Using the Library for your annotated bibliography was not dealt with today. Library colleagues did not appear today nor was any reference made to them.
There were no Group elevator pitches (5 mins each) nor was any reference made to them.
The Personas section of today’s class was about the creation of fictional characters to guide your design. Rather than designing your artefact for every possible user, the idea of personas is that you design for small number of fictional users. These users can be illustrated as basic silhouetted figures of (say) a child, a grandmother, a disabled person, etc. The need for personas was initially identified in the mid 1990s in the marketing sector, followed quickly by the software sector. An example of a user profile for a particular persona could be:
Name: Susan Normal
Age: 18 years old
Size: 5’8″
The Learning Outcomes section of today’s class was an examination of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives that I had previously seen in Module 1 (Learning Theories).
The three highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are:
Evaluation (Critical thinking)
Synthesis (Creativity)
Analysis
The three lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are:
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
Note 1: Damian Gordon thinks that the three higher level learning objectives (above) are on the same level.
Note 2: Damian Gordon doesn’t like the terms ‘lower order’ versus ‘higher order’.
The evolution from Bloom’s 1956 model to Lori Anderson’s 2001 model was progressed further in 2009 when Mike Fisher produced a learning tools version of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
http://digigogy.blogspot.ie/2009/02/digital-blooms-visual.html
https://www.diigo.com/profile/mikefisher821
The Universal Design Process section of today’s class looked at the following stages:
The Discover Phase
The Definition Phase
The Development Stage
The Delivery Stage
The Models for Learning Design section of today’s class looked at the following two models:
(1) ADDIE Model for Learning Design (in which there are 5 phases):
Analysis
Design
Development
Implementation
Evaluation
Remarkably, it appears that the ADDIE model wasn’t specifically developed by any single author.
(2) The 7Cs of Learning Design (in which there are 7 phases):
Conceptualise (Vision)
Create (Activity)
Communicate (Activity)
Collaborate (Activity)
Consider (Activity)
Combine (Synthesis)
Consolidate (Implementation)
The 7Cs is a Learning Design Workshop that evolved in 2012 from an older Open University Learning Design Initiative (OULDI) project for which Professor Grainne Conole was the lead investigator. Since Professor Conole had at this stage moved to the University of Leicester, this institution was given the opportunity to trial and explore the OULDI resources as part of the initiative.
The Most Important Components of Learning section of today’s class looked at some of the findings of John Hattie’s (Australian Researcher) work. Damian said that he is a ‘fan’ of John Hattie and that he has great time for him.
Damian referred to the following John Hattie’s publication:
Hattie, J. (2003). Teachers Make a Difference, What is the research evidence?.
Hattie found that feedback is the most important aspect of learning. Here are the four most important aspects of learning according to Hattie’s research with the ‘Effect Size’ number after each:
Feedback (1.13)
Students prior cognitive ability (1.04)
Instructional quality (1.00)
Direct Instruction (0.82)
Feelings
I very much enjoyed today’s class even though only one of the four topics that were on the agenda for today – Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Learning Outcomes) – was actually delivered. I felt that all of the areas that were covered were ‘taught’ very well by Damian.
Evaluation
Since today was Week 3, it was important that today’s class dealt with ‘Models of Learning Design’ (ADDIE and the 7 Cs) and ‘Personas’ to feed into the design of my group’s storyboard for our ‘Composting’ project. However, I think that these should have been covered in last week’s class that was meant to gave dealt with ‘Storyboarding and Personas’.
Analysis
I prefer when a topic is covered with more depth and history. The 7Cs of Learning Design is something that evolved over a couple of years into a workshop. ADDIE is a model whereas the 7Cs is a workshop. Moreover, the 7Cs workshop uses specific tools (e.g. Blackboard to collaborate) and nether this fact, nor any of the tools, were mentioned in today’s class. In my opinion, the lectures in a Level 9 course should have more depth. As a Maths teacher, one of the things that really improved my teaching was becoming extremely au fait with the history of mathematics in my early years of teaching.
Conclusions
It looks like there is going to continue to be misalignment between the classes as described in the hard copy Module Handbook 2016/17, the class itself and the Webcourses materials for the classes. This is not trivial. There are four components to the assessment. It makes sense that if today’s class was to deal with using the Library for my annotated bibliography, then I would schedule time this week to go to the Library. (The Library section never happened, Library staff never appeared and no reference to these facts were made by Damian and Pauline). If last week’s class had dealt with personas (instead of this week), then it would have made sense to build on this during ‘homework’ by devoting the week to the storyboard aspect of the ‘Composting’ project.
Personal Action Plans
Source the 11 books on the Essential Reading List for Instructional Design.
Further reading on Instructional Design models (e.g. Dick and Carey).
Begin reading for, and writing, my annotated bibliographies.