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Instructional Design Activity: Course Design

Your IDA was evaluated by: Dr. Law

Overall Instructor Rating: Satisfactory

Ratings explanation:

  • Exemplary - A model answer in almost every way (this is given out very rarely).
  • Satisfactory - Very well done; you've met the expectations of the assignment. There are some minor problems, so read my feedback well.
  • Marginal Pass - You pass, but there are lots of issues to consider. Read my feedback very carefully and be sure you understand the points/issues I raise.
  • Not satisfactory, redo and resubmit - The assignment was not completed appropriately. I am concerned that you do not understand the process well enough yet. To get credit for the assignment, you need to redo it, most probably on another topic. Read and consider my feedback very carefully before redoing.

Instructor's Overall Feedback:

Hi Lindsay: You did a nice job on your course and unit design. Most of your objectives are very clearly stated and have measureable outcomes. A few things worth mentioning: 1. The emergency vehicle lesson objective is not reflected in the unit objective statement. Perhaps the unit objective statement could be broadened to reflect this topic. 2.The visual relationship of the objectives in both the course and unit maps reflects a hiearchichal relationship among the objectives. It says that you must complete the bottom objective before you can complete the next level objective. This may not be the case with your course and unit objectives. If the student could learn the objectives in any order then you want to display them in a horizontal fashion. Let me know if you have any questions. You do not need to resubmit this IDA with my changes. Dr. Law

 

This activity builds on the needs assessment IDA. This IDA is divided into two parts. First, you will design a rough outline of a course. In this context, "course" is defined as an instructional entity, which has both a recognizable start and finish point, and has an organized set of content. It is the most general instructional solution to a problem identified in needs assessment. Second, you will choose one of the units from your course design and design a rough outline of that unit (of course, in the 'real world', you would do this for all of your units). The activity is designed to give you hands-on practice with course- and unit-level task analysis.

1. Click here to read background information about this assignment.

Preliminary: Reviewing Goals Resulting from Needs Assessment

2. Restate the instructional goal(s) from IDA#1, or change topics and write new goals:

Your rewritten goal needs to pass two tests.

Test One - Is the goal too fuzzy or not instructional?

According to Dick, Carey, and Carey (2001, p. 25), an "instructional goal is 1) a clear, general statement of learner outcomes, (2) related to an identified problem and needs assessment, and (3) achievable through instruction ..."

For example, the following goals are too fuzzy:

  • "The Department of Instructional Technology will create a course to teach instructional design." This goal does not state the learning outcomes, that is, what the learners will be able to do after taking the course.
  • "Students will know how to do instructional design." Both the verb "know" and the phrase "instructional design" are too vague.

The following goal is not instructional in nature:

  • "The College of Education needs to hire more instructional design faculty." The problem is one of allocating more personnel resources.

Test two - Is the learning outcome of the instructional goal an intellectual skill at the level of a rule or problem solving?

Based on Gagne's types of learning outcomes (refer to Dick, Carey, & Carey, p. 38-41), ask yourself if your goal is in the intellectual skills domain at level of rules or problem-solving. If it is not, then you need to couch it in a more general context and restate your goal so that it is. For example, a goal of "being able to design a web page" is too narrow and should be couched in the context of "being able to design a web site". Designing a web page is best seen as a "unit" in a course about how to design a web site.

It may be helpful to also give your goal a short descriptive title.

Example

Title: Designing systematic instruction

Goal: Students will be able to generate an instructional design project by conducting all appropriate procedures for macro- and micro-instructional design.

Write your course title (optional) and instructional goal here:

Your response:

Title: Driver's Education Course Goal: Students will demonstrate their knowledge of traffic procedures, vehicle systems and vehicle maintenance by correctly answering 85% of the written test. Students will also their knowledge from the written test to a hands-on driving assessment by executing at least 85% of the driving and vehicle exercises correctly.

Part 1: Course-Level Design

As you complete your course design, take note that a well-written instructional goal can also be considered as the terminal objective for the course. (We will better define a "terminal objective" later in the course. As you will see later in this course, writing a good objective is a skill unto itself!)

3. Identify the units.

Based on the instructional goal(s) and learning outcomes, conduct a goal analysis (also known as a task analysis) as described by Dick, Carey, and Carey in Chapter 3. You are now beginning to break down what the learner needs to know in order to achieve the instructional goal. Identify the mental and/or physical steps that someone must go through in order to complete the learning task.

Identify the 3-4 most critical units of the course and state the objectives. These should also generally be limited to intellectual skills learning outcomes such as problem solving and relational rules. For some cases, there may be a need for an attitude learning outcome. (Note: the number of units will depend on your instructional problem and design. If you have more than 4, just include the 4 most critical here). Write the unit title and objectives below.

A. Unit 1 objective

Example

Title: Performing a needs analysis

Obj: Learners will design and conduct (generate) an appropriate needs analysis.

Your response:

Title: Understanding Traffic Rules, Signals and Signs Objective: Learners will identify and summarize the purpose and uses of certain traffic rules, signals and signs.

B. Unit 2 objective

Example

Title: Identifying instructional goals

Obj: Learners will generate 3-5 instructional goals based on data gathered through needs analysis.

Your response:

Title: Demonstrating Proper Use of Vehicle Systems Objective: Learners will demonstrate proper use of vehicle systems.

C. Unit 3 objective

Example

Title: Performing a task analysis

Obj: Learners will generate the sequence of tasks for achieving their instructional goal using the principle of learning hierarchies.

Your response:

Title: Performing Vehicle Maintenance Objective: Learners will perform basic vehicle mainenance.

D. Unit 4 objective

Your response:

Title: Execution of Driving Techniques on the Road Objective: Students will execute proper driving and traffic techniques in an authentic driving situation.

As you finish this step, take note that these unit objectives can be considered as enabling objectives for the course. That is, accomplishing these objectives enable the person to accomplish the course's terminal objective.

4. Draw an Instructional Curriculum Map (ICM)

An ICM visually represents the optimal sequence of these objectives. (Just think of it as a flowchart.) Draw the ICM in "top-down" fashion with the terminal objective (i.e. course objective) at the top. Instructional events are designed top-down, though learners will ultimately experience the instruction bottom-up. If there is room in your ICM, include the full objectives, otherwise, just include the title. Click here for an example (generated with Inspiration).

Although doing this step is required, actually submitting it here is optional because of the technical requirements of converting an image to either the GIF or JPEG file format and uploading it to a web server. (Inspiration gives the option to save as both gif and jpeg.)

If you are able to do this, enter the URL (web address) of the image file here:

http://

Your response:

I spent several hours trying to upload my .gif image of my ICMs onto my webpage - I ended up frustrated and unsuccessful.

If you are able to convert the flowchart to a GIF or JPEG, but you do not know how to upload it to a server, you can email it to your instructor as an attachment with the request that it be uploaded it for you. If you do this, please name your file according to this convention: "yourLastName-course-icm.gif".

Part 2: Unit-Level Design

The purpose of this step is for you to expand one of the objectives that you identified above in your course design. As you work through this second part of this IDA, you will begin to notice that you will be repeating the same steps above, but with one of the unit objectives. The only difference is that your design will be more specific and less general than that of your course design. You will again implement a hierarchical process by analyzing the task at different levels.

Click here to view Lloyd Rieber's instructional curriculum map (ICM) on one of the units in his Dreamweaver course example.

1. Restate one of the unit (enabling) objectives or goals you identified in your course design.

This objective will become the terminal objective for your unit. Compare the use of the terms "terminal" and "enabling" here to how they were used above for the course design. These terms are relative to the ICM on which you are working. An enabling objective in your course ICM becomes the terminal objective in a unit ICM. Then, an enabling objective in your unit ICM becomes your terminal objective in a lesson ICM.

(Note: I interchange goal and objectives here because you may realize after further analysis that your objective identified in your course ICM was not clear or appropriate, which means that it is really a goal. After completing this IDA, you may need to rewrite your terminal objective for this unit.)

Example

Title: Designing systematic instruction

Unit Objective: Learners will design and conduct (generate) an appropriate needs analysis.

Write your unit title (optional) and instructional objective here:

Your response:

Title: Execution of Driving Techniques on the Road Unit Objective: Students will execute proper driving and traffic techniques in an authentic driving situation.

Be sure to include in your objective the learned capability verb that corresponds to one of Gagne's learning domains: Problem-solving (generate); Rule-using (demonstrate); concept (classify, identify); verbal information (state, recite, summarize); attitudinal (choose); psychomotor (execute).

2. Identify the intellectual skill objectives for the lessons in the unit.

Based on the instructional goal(s) and learning outcomes, conduct an subordinate skills analysis as described by Dick, Carey, and Carey in chapter 4. You are now beginning to breakdown what the learner needs to know in order to achieve the instructional goal. Each objective you generate can roughly be considered a lesson objective (as we will discuss in class, some lessons may have more than one objective; but there is no sense risking confusion on this point now.)

Identify the 3-5 most critical parts of the unit (referred to as "lessons"). These should generally be limited to intellectual skills learning outcomes such as problem solving and relational rules. For some cases, there may be a need for an attitude learning outcome. (Note: the number of lessons will depend on your instructional problem and design. Add or eliminate lessons as you deem necessary). Write the lesson/enabling objectives below.

A. Lesson1

Example

Title: Describing the learning context

Obj: Learners will classify the learning context using physical, social, and organizational characteristics.

Your response:

Title: Traffic Signs, Signals and Lights Obj: Learners will demonstrate actions to take when driving upon traffic lights, stop and yield signs, flashing lights and school busses.

B. Lesson 2

Example

Title: Identifying symptoms of the problem

Obj: Learners will identify symptoms of an instructional problem with accompanying evidence and reasoning.

Your response:

Title: Left - Hand Turns Obj: Drivers will demonstrate proper procedure for making left turns.

C. Lesson 3

Example

Title: Identifying data to verify problem

Obj: Learners will identify the types of data needed to verify problem.

Your response:

Title: Emergency Situations Obj: Learners will demonstrate procedures for sharing the road with police, emergency and school vehicles.

3. Identify supporting objectives from the verbal information and attitudinal domains.

Identify these objectives using verbs such as "state, list, or summarize" for verbal information objectives and "choose" for attitudinal objectives. (If you have more than 2, just list those 2 that best represent these other objectives. Be sure to include these objectives on your visual ICM to indicate which intellectual skills they support.)

Write two supporting objectives here:

Your response:

state meanings of traffic signs, signals and lights classify vehicles as emergency, police and school vehicles

4. Identify entry behaviors (also known as prerequisite skills).

Entry behaviors are those skills and knowledge that you expect your students to have as they begin this unit. That is, you do not intend to teach these. Although you will undoubtedly have many objectives denoting entry behaviors, just list one example below (but be sure to include all entry behaviors on your instructional curriculum map).

Your response:

read traffic signs start vehicle

5. Draw an Instructional Curriculum Map (ICM) for the Unit

An ICM visually represents the optimal sequence of these objectives. (Just think of it as a flowchart.) Draw the ICM in "top-down" fashion with the terminal objective (i.e. unit objective) at the top. Instructional events are designed top-down, though learners will ultimately experience the instruction bottom-up. If there is room in your ICM, include the full objectives, otherwise, just include the title. Entry behaviors should be drawn at the very bottom with a dotted line separating these from the other objectives just above. Click here for an example (generated with Inspiration).

Although doing this step is required, actually submitting it here is optional because of the technical requirements of converting an image to either the GIF or JPEG file format and uploading it to a web server. (Inspiration gives the option to save as both gif and jpeg.)

If you are able to do this, enter the URL (web address) of the image file in the field below.

If you are able to convert the flowchart to a GIF or JPEG, but you do not know how to upload it to a server, you can email it to Lloyd Rieber as an attachment and he will upload it for you (and he will enter the URL here for you). If you do this, please name your file according to this convention: "yourLastName-unit-icm.gif".

http://

Your response: