R521: Instructional Design and Development
Syllabus
Course info
School of Education
Department of Instructional Systems Technology
Section Number: 6132
INSTRUCTOR
Elizabeth Boling, M.F.A.
Phone: 812-856-8467
Email: eboling@indiana.edu
ADJUNCT INSTRUCTOR
Todd Zazelenchuk, Ph.D.
Phone: 812-855-4499
Email: tzazelen@indiana.edu
ASSISTANT INSTRUCTOR
Ugur Kale, ukale@indiana.edu
FACILITATORS
Tami Goodrich -draft reports
Roberto Joseph - Time-Revealed Scenario
COURSE ACCESS
Course website: http://www.indiana.edu/~istcore/r521
Course forum: http://ssf.indiana.edu/r521
Course listserv: ist_r521@indiana.edu
Class meeting time: Monday and Tuesday, 4 to 6:45 p.m.
Room: Education 1120 (School of Education Auditorium)
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Course Philosophy and Approach
WORKING AS AN INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER
People learn best when they are highly motivated and actively engaged in learning tasks, and learning is most useful when it is directly related to learner needs. Most of the learning in this course occurs within the context of projects and situations similar to those that you would be likely to encounter in a real-world context.
WORKING AS A TEAM MEMBER
In addition to learning the process and principles of instructional design, this course also focuses on helping you learn how to best work as a team member within the design process.
You can expect teamwork and group work to be the norm after you leave the program, regardless of whether you expect to work in school-based, government, higher education or corporate environments and regardless of whether you work inside an organization or as an independent consultant. Consequently, the core courses in the IST program provide multiple experiences in team development. In this course, your two major projects will be completed in three-person teams. The instructor will create team assignments for both projects. A portion of your grade will be awarded based on the way in which you work with your team. Some students come into the program with extensive background in true teamwork. Most, however, do not. A substantial and important part of this course is dedicated to helping you learn about concepts, tools, and skills related to working effectively in groups and teams. If you already have a lot of experience in teamwork, we expect you to serve as an example and a resource for your fellow core class members.
WORKING AS AN INDEPENDENT LEARNER
To round out your experiences related to instructional design and team work, a third important approach used in this course is to foster your development as a resourceful, independent learner and designer.
Most professional organizations today are in processes of dramatic change. The expectation for our field is that we "add value" to the change process. We expect you to start now to act in a semi-autonomous manner to solve the "real" problems we present to you.
In addition to providing direct coaching when you need it, we expend much of our effort constructing the environment and circumstances of your learning, and in monitoring and managing the process of learning. You have to take the initiative to request our help when you need it. You have to take responsibility for your own learning, and view us as an enthusiastic resource upon which you can draw.
Much in ISD may be new to you right now, so this course will begin with a fair amount of guidance in terms of what information to access and how to facilitate your learning. However, during the year we will gradually reduce that guidance and require you to decide what you need to study in order to be able to perform the tasks you are given.
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Course Objectives
Instructional systems development (ISD) is used as a broad term, encompassing a wide range of activities, including:
- analysis (including identifying learning needs and analyzing tasks),
- design and development of a solution,
- visual design and media production,
- student assessment,
- formative evaluation and revision,
- implementation,
- summative evaluation,
- project management
- using computers,
- consulting,
- participating in group processes.
At the conclusion of all the core courses you should be able to:
A. Discuss key elements of the instructional systems development process, including:
- the rationale for using a systematic approach.
- instructional development models and comparing/contrasting their emphases.
- rationale and procedures for formative evaluation and revision.
- approaches to successful implementation of the instruction or intervention.
B. Demonstrate competence in doing instructional systems development, specifically:
- analyze performance problems to determine the need for instruction.
- analyze necessary inputs (characteristics of learners, learning environments and learning tasks) in order to make good instructional design decisions.
- specify appropriate objectives and measures for given learning tasks and learners.
- select appropriate instructional strategies and formats.
- design and develop course outlines and small lessons.
- use effective message design in the creation of instructional materials.
- produce quality instruction using a variety of media.
- conduct formative and summative evaluations of instruction.
- plan for effective implementation and organizational change.
- use group-process skills to work productively in an ISD team.
- use computers effectively in the ISD process.
- show sensitivity to ethical issues and concerns.
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Assignments
PROJECT 1: PROCEDURE LEARNING
Together with two other students from the class, you will design a 2-3 hour workshop that teaches a procedure or a procedural skill. You will choose the combination of procedure, learners and context from a list of choices that include reasonably complex physical procedures typical of those taught in real world settings. For this project you will employ simple media, most likely print-based materials.
PROJECT 2: CONCEPT LEARNING
Together with two other class members, you will develop a concept learning lesson that leads learners to mastery of 7-10 related concepts. This is a typical, although simplified, assignment that you could encounter a number of times in your professional careers. You will again choose the combination of concepts, learners and context from a list of choices provided in class. For this project you will develop a web-based component of the instructional materials that will not encompass the entire lesson, but will play an integral role in it.
TEAM DELIVERABLES (same for Project 1 and Project 2)
For each of the two projects your team will be responsible, at designated intervals, for the following items (deliverables):
Analysis Plan
As the first step of instructional design, you will complete an analysis of the learners, tasks, and context for your lesson. The analysis plan should also provide a detailed description of the processes that your team intends to use to complete the various analyses, with supporting citations from professional literature that justify the strategies being used by your team.
Instructional Design Plan:
The information that you gather from your analyses should be the foundation of your instructional design. The instructional design plan should include your plans for:
- The objectives of the instruction
- Testing and evaluation strategies to be used in the instruction, as appropriate
- Feedback mechanisms that will support testing and evaluation
- Practice activities to be used in the instruction, including feedback strategies
- Examples and non-examples of the procedure (if appropriate)
- Introductory presentation of instruction
- Motivational strategies to be used in instruction
- Basic plans for instructor materials
Instructional Materials
When you have conducted your analysis and finalized your instructional design plan, you will prduce the actual materials required to implement this instruction. These materials will include everything required for the learners and for those who will actually teach or administer the lesson (often in the form of a guide for the instructor). These materials should be developed in a finished and sturdy enough form for you to carry out a usability evaluation on them, and should be refined if necessary following that evaluation before you turn them in as final.
Project Report
Together with your instructional product, you will document the decisions that you have made throughout the instructional design process in a project report that you will turn in along with the instructional materials that you produce. The project report will follow a template provided to you, and should include at least:
- justification of instructional approach chosen
- justification for at least 5 major instructional decisions/features
- description of at least 3 development decisions made to ensure that materials are easy for students (and teachers) to use
- description the expected distribution/ maintenance requirements
- description of procedures used for formative evaluation and revision of your instructional products (evaluation should address: content accuracy, instructional quality, visual/production quality, usability, appropriateness of objectives)
- report of findings from evaluation
- report of revisions to be made to the instruction
- brief description of contributions made to the report by each team member
- citations and references as appropriate.
Team Reports
Reporting is an important skill for the kind of consultative work instructional designers typically do. Twice during each project, your team will submit a report regarding your project activities. In addition to being a good exercise for developing skills that you need on the job, this practice helps your instructor act as an effective coach for you during your projects. In these reports you should provide an accurate description of what your team activities have been, a summary of your team's progress since the last report, and an assessment of what you think is going well and not going well on your project.
Project 2 Presentation
Following Project 2, your team will make a stand up presentation to the class in which you outline the main parameters of your project and demonstrate the instruction itself in abbreviated form. This presentation will be designed as if it were to be given to a client who had requested development of the instruction. Each member of your team will be expected to present, and you will be expected to develop a concise but complete overview of your project.
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INDIVIDUAL DELIVERABLES
Peer Reviews
Objective review of your own performance and that of your peers is a critical skill in team-based professional work. Following Project 1 and Project 2, you will write a detailed peer review covering yourself and each of your teammates. Your peer review will be graded on the thoughtfulness and degree of personal challenge you set for yourself in assessing the team experience. The review will cover:
- contributions each member made to the project
- each members performance in the process of completing the project
- your assessment of the positive and negative aspects of the team process, with yourself included as a player
- your refletion on lessons you have learned, as well as on the strategies you might employ another time to avoid or ameliorate problems encountered
Reflections on Group Dynamics
Individual reflection in this course will include the text, Group Dynamics. You will be responsible for reading 5 assigned chapters in this text, and you completing brief reflection exercises which you will submit to the instructor. These readings and reflections are intended to help you better understand the forces that act upon group dynamics, and to engage in critical self-analysis in order to explore the relationships between your group skills and group effectiveness.
Individual Report Drafts
For each project your team will produce a joint report to turn in with your instructional materials. Before turning in that report, the individuals on each team will each turn in a draft of a portion of the report section for which they are taking primary responsibility. Your grade on the draft you turn in will be added into the individual portion of your grade.
Time-Revealed Scenario
The Time-Revealed Scenario on Working in Teams will be presented at the end of Project 1, and you will be assigned to work through it with 2-3 other students in the class. The Scenario is a web-based, asynchronous learning experience in which characters and situations typical of the core class are presented in a variety of formats. Over a 3-week period (the second two weeks overlapping with Project 2) you will experience the scenario and participate in activities linked to many of the scenes within it. Facilitators will participate with you, and your participation in the scenario will be evaluated as one portion of your individual grade for the course. This scenario was developed specifically for use in the core class by IST faculty and students in cooperation with WisdomTools, Inc., developer of web-based tools for learning.
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Evaluation and Grading
| PROJECT #1: PROCEDURE LEARNING |
| Deliverable |
Percentage of Grade |
| Analysis Plan (required to proceed) |
2.5% |
| Instructional Design Plan (required to proceed) |
2.5% |
| Instructional Materials |
15% |
| Project Report |
10% |
| Team Report |
2.5% |
| Individual deliverables |
Percentage of Grade |
| Individual report draft |
5% |
| Peer reviews |
5% |
| PROJECT #2: CONCEPT LEARNING |
| Deliverable |
Percentage of Grade |
| Analysis Plan (required to proceed) |
2.5% |
| Instructional Design Plan (required to proceed) |
2.5% |
| Instructional Materials |
15% |
| Project Report |
10% |
| Team Report |
2.5% |
| Product Presentation |
2.5% |
| Individual deliverables |
Percentage of Grade |
| Individual report draft |
5% |
| Peer reviews |
5% |
| ADDITIONAL ASSIGNMENTS |
| Deliverable |
Percentage of Grade |
| Group Dynamics Reflections |
5% |
| Time-Revealed Scenario Participation |
7.5% |
| TOTAL |
100% |
Grading of Assignments
The School of Education's policy regarding grading for student work at the Graduate level provides the following outline for scoring student assignments:
- A (95 - 100%) = Extraordinarily high achievement and professional quality of work; shows unusually complete command of the subject matter; represents an exceptionally high degree of originality and creativity.
- A- (90 - 94%) = Exceptionally thorough knowledge of the subject matter; outstanding performance and professional quality of work.
- B+ (86 - 89%) = Significantly above average understanding of material and professional quality of work.
- B (83 - 86%) = Signifies mastery and fulfillment of all course requirements; very good professional quality work.
- B- (80 - 82%) = Good, acceptable work.
- C+ (77 - 79%) = Satisfactory quality of work.
- C (73 - 76%) = Minimally acceptable performance and quality of work; partial mastery.
- C- / D (60 - 72%) = Unacceptable work, does not demonstrate mastery.
- F (Below 60%) = Completely unacceptable work.
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