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Instructional Design Activity: Course Design


Your IDA was evaluated by: Ying Liu

Overall Instructor Rating: Exemplary

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:

Thanks for providing the ICMs. It has been very helpful for me to understand your course and unit design and to evaluate how well you have understood the instructions that prepare you for this IDA. This is a very well-done IDA! You surely have got the essence of course and unit design. I only have a few comments on both your course and unit design: You seem to have grasped the main ideas and demonstrated a few things that I’m glad to see. First, you seemed to understand the need for using the learned capability verbs for different levels of objectivities. You also accurately identified them by either using the verbs in your objective statements or presenting them in a parenthesis following the objective statements when you used other specific verbs in the statements. This is enough for me to know that you’ve grasped the key that has been emphasized again and again in the class instruction. To make what you’ve done even better, you may actually use the standard capability verbs in the parenthesis as the verbs of the objectives statements and reword the sentences a little to reflect other specific verbs. For example, for unit 1 objective, you can state it as “SWBAT demonstrate creation, saving, and opening a power point presentation file” instead of “SWBAT create, save, and open a power point presentation file. (generate).” [Note from Greg: Ying is also rightly pointing out that many of your objectives are rule-using (demonstrate) rather than problem-solving (generate). For example, "generate text in different sizes and fonts" might possibly be something like "generate short paragraphs of text on related subtopics for each slide" but also "demonstrate use of different sizes and fonts." In other words, any free writing you have learners do could maybe use "generate," but a skill like using text formatting is not as complex and can be done following a few simple rules (demonstrate).] Second, your objectives are well written. Your terminal (course) objective and the enabling objectives reflect how the desired instructional outcomes will be achieved. Overall, the representation of the whole learning process is very logical, clear, and concise. In your course and unit design, the sequences of your units and lessons are very clear and appropriate. Last, you did a great job identifying the supporting skills and entry behaviors and representing them using the Inspiration package. The skills in verbal information and attitudinal domains are well identified and presented well. There are only three things to note in your unit ICM: 1) When attitudinal objectives and the verbal information are used as supporting skills, the circle with an “A” in it (representing an attitudinal objective) and the triangle with a “V” in it should be placed on the line between the supporting skills and the objectives instead of on the border of the boxes representing those supporting skills. 2) According to Dr. Rieber’s example, the lesson objectives are put in boxes that are sequenced in a straight line right below the unit objective as you did in the course ICM. That way, the long vertical straight line (on the right side of the lesson objective boxes) stemming from the bottom and pointing to the unit objective is not necessary and should be deleted to avoid confusion about the relationships between the individual lessons and the unit. 3) The prerequisite skills are well identified and presented. My suggestion is to represent them in rectangular boxes instead of cloud shape textboxes for in order for consistency and neatness. That’s all I have to comment on your IDA. Keep up the good work! Ying [Note from Greg: Along with my note above, I approve of Ying's feedback. Well done! My only concern is that of scope - I'm not convinced yet that an entire course is needed for students to learn these specific PowerPoint skills. Could your unit objectives really be lesson-level objectives? In which case, your course goal might need to be broader. But I am also willing to be convinced that this scope is appropriate. Maybe there is more involved for these learners to learn these skills than what I am thinking.]

 


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: Creating Power Point Presentations Goal: Students will be able to generate a power point presentation consisting of at least five slides that include text in different fonts and sizes, at least one image, one Internet link, and one sound clip.

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:

Unit 1 Title: Correctly create, save, and open a power point presentation Obj: SWBAT create, save, and open a power point presentation file. (generate)

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:

Unit 2 Title: Creating slides Odj: SWBAT generate five slides with different formats.

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:

Unit 3 Title: Entering Text Ogj: SWBAT will generate text in different sizes and fonts.

D. Unit 4 objective

Your response:

Unit 4 Title: Inserting an Images Obj: SWBAT insert images from clip art and the Internet onto a slide. (demonstrate)

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:

http://dtslmuga.googlepages.com/IDA21.gif

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:

Unit 1 Title: Correctly create, save, and open a power point presentation Obj: SWBAT create, save, and open a power point presentation file. (generate)

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: Creating a Power Point File Obj: SWBAT generate a new Power Point file.

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: Saving a File Obj: SWBAT to name and save a Power Point file. (demonstrate)

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: Opening a Power Point file SWBAT open a saved Power Point file. (demonstrate)


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:

SWBAT list the steps to create, save, and open a Power Point file. (Verbal) SWBAT choose to create a new Power Point presentation using autoContent Wizard, design template, or blank presentation. (attitudinal)


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:

Students should be able to turn computer on and off, use a mouse, and have basic keyboard knowledge. Students should have basic Internet searching skills.

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:

http://dtslmuga.googlepages.com/IDA2unit1.gif