Instructional Design Activity: Course Design
Your IDA was evaluated by: Greg Clinton Overall Instructor Rating: Satisfactory Ratings explanation:
Instructor's Overall Feedback: Thanks for providing the attractive and well-laid out ICMs -- I focused mainly on those in giving you feedback (it's always easier to react to a visual). And you've done some nice work. You seem to understand the sequencing of instruction pretty well. The main thing I want you to think about is the wording of objectives using the standard learned capability verbs. I also was concerned that your scope might be too small, but the more I look at your IDA the more it seems that I was mistaken about this, since at very least you have a unit that will involve reading an entire book. (You will want to share this point with your buddy, who, I note, was working on a similar topic. I was not convinced about the appropriateness of scope with your buddy's IDA, and perhaps that was my mistake, or perhaps your work here helps to represent that better for me.) --Course design-- It's interesting to see that you've used the verb "choose" as an action verb in your course goal and the "Choosing a Book" unit objective. Most people tend to get confused when they do this, thinking that "choose" will in this case be an attitudinal outcome. You haven't made that mistake. But all the same, since "choose (to)" does have a special meaning in ID, it's best to avoid it when we are not designating an attitudinal objective. In each of the places where you've used "choose," the verb "select" would work very well. "Select" doesn't have the same kind of multiple meanings that "choose" has. Rule of thumb: If "choose to" fits, use it (as in choose to do something). If "select" fits, use it instead (as in demonstrate selecting from among options). And note that I'm generally associating "select" with rule-using, so I've inserted the verb "demonstrate" in my example above to denote that level of intellectual skill. Whatever version you settle on should include the standard learned capability verb for the outcome you are trying to teach. And that leads me to the recommendation to use the standard learned capability verbs for *all* of your objectives. At the time you went through this IDA, we hadn't yet studied objectives in detail, but we did cover the learned capability verbs. Thus in your course ICM, the current course goal should be thought of in terms of what level of intellectual skill you are teach. Consider something like "SWBAT demonstrate selecting an age- and reading level-appropriate book for leisure reading by following appropriate criteria and procedures." You should take a similar approach with the unit objectives as well. I would encourage you to use SWBAT consistently in all of your objectives rather than just at the top. This will help you avoid the slip of saying "Students will learn to" as you have under Reviewing Materials. "Learn to" is what you want to happen, of course, but it isn't a measurable behavior that should go into an objective. --Unit design-- As I mentioned in my course design comments, the standard learned capability verbs should be used for all the unit and lesson level objectives. And once again, you will want to change the instances of the verb "choose" as I discussed above. Further, I want to caution you away from trying to describe how the instruction will proceed when you are writing out your lesson objectives. "Students will read the book while paying attention to vocabulary, content, and interest level" is an instructional procedure, not an objective. Your objectives need to state what you need learners to be *able* to *do* at this stage in order to be able to go to the next stage. For the most part, your unit ICM seems to be about *how* to teach this content, but it should be about *what* to teach, what skill you want learners to have at the end of each lesson. As you look at re-wording your objectives, look also at the structure of your task analysis here - what actually leads to what? I say that because you have "and read the book" tacked on to the end of your terminal objective and yet "Reading the Book" is one of your lesson objectives that should lead to the terminal objective. Meantime, the supporting objectives and entry skills seem appropriate and correctly presented in the ICM. Ok, that's it for this IDA - nice job, once again! Greg
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. |