Your IDA was evaluated by: Ying Liu

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:

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. You’ve done nice work! Please see the following few comments: - Course Design - You seem to have grasped the main ideas and demonstrated a few things that I’m glad to see. First, I particularly like the way you split up and laid out the units. It’s very clear, comprehensive, and logical. I believe this course will be really beneficial to many people if it can be successfully designed, developed, and implemented. Second, the use of the learned capability verbs for your unit objectives is accurate and the way you state the information (especially the first two unit objectives) is precise and makes a lot of sense. For the unit 3 and 4 objectives, my suggestion is that you follow what you did for unit 1 and 2 objectives and state the last two objectives in more direct and observable terms. So instead of saying “demonstrate the ability to research information about a particular job using the Internet”, you may say “demonstrate researching information about a particular job using the Internet”. The same applies to the unit 4 objective. The second sentences in unit 3 and 4 objectives are good supplementary information to further describe the stated capability but are not unnecessary at this point. Third, your ICM represented the major instructional unit chunks and appropriately included an attitudinal objective. Here are a few suggestions though: 1) For the attitudinal objective, no arrows to or from the course objective are needed. [Note from Greg: In Inspiration, the arrowheads can be removed by first selecting the arrows and then going to the Link>Arrow Direction menu and selecting "No Arrows".] 2) You did a good job writing unit objectives, but what about putting the verbatim information in each unit objective box instead of stating general things such as “demonstrate how to know/prepare yourself”? Spelling out the objective word by word helps your audience to recognize them and understand the relationships. 3) For the course design, it’s crucial to show the order in which the various units should be organized. The sample design has each unit leading to the next one with an upward arrow pointing to the one of a higher level (the one that should be taught later). The sequence is particularly important because it demonstrates the learning hierarchy which should not be violated because learning won’t happen otherwise. In your case, for example, searching job and organization information should come before preparing for the interviews. [Note from Greg: Although Dr. Rieber and Ying have emphasized the learning hierarchy between units, I think it is a bit less important here, as long as you have a logical sequence to your units. Showing the order in which the units should be taught - if there is a preferred order - is crucial, as Ying said. But making sure you don't violate the learning hierarchy is more crucial, in my thinking, when you sequence your lessons (at the unit design level) than when you sequence your units.] 4) The prerequisite skills do not need to be included in a course design, although you definitely need them for unit design. - Unit Design - Only three things to note here: First, you should use standard learned capability verbs as you did for the course design. So for lesson 1 objective, it’ll be better to state “Learners will generate appropriate questions to ask of employers during an interview such as products and services provided, organizational structure, plans for expansion, and problems that the organization needs to overcome.” And this clearly indicates a problem-solving level objective, which makes your objective high/complex enough on the hierarchy. As such, the verbs in your titles for lesson 1 and 2 should be changed to “generate” accordingly. Similarly, objective for lesson 3 should be restate as “Learners will demonstrate answering questions appropriately during an interview.” Second, “using the the S/TAR method” (and an explanatory sentence that follows) seems a strategy to achieve the instructional objective for lesson 3, which is not necessary at this stage. Also, as I pointed out in your course design, you should list all the objectives literally as you wrote in the IDA. The entry behavior (prerequisite skills) should be included in this unit design instead of the course design. The last issue concerns the supporting objectives you included as verbal information. It’s true that the instruction about supporting objectives says it should be from the verbal information and attitudinal domains. However, “generate” is not the matching verb for verbal information but “list” that you used in the ICM is. [Note from Greg: The question for you here seems to be 'What is the difference between the supporting verbal information and the objective it is supporting?' What is it that students are going to generate? If it is just the same list of questions, then this is all still verbal information and is supporting what comes after it in the sequence. But in this case what comes next is the unit objective. So it appears that one (or more) of the lessons will just be memorizing verbal information, which is an unsatisfactory situation. What can you do with these lesson objectives to push them into a higher form of learning? ] That’s all I have to comment on your IDA. Please let me know if you have questions about my feedback. Keep up the good work! Ying [Note from Greg: I approve of Ying's excellent feedback, just with the additional notes I have included above. Some of her comments should sound familiar after we went over things in class. ]

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.