DETT 607 Instructional Design and Course Development
in Distance Education
An examination of the instructional design process, its history and place in today’s course development efforts, and the use of instructional design components in practice. Emphasis is on the nature of learning and the requirements for effective instruction. The theoretical underpinnings of learning are explored and applied to the design of a prototype classroom. Management issues surrounding course and curriculum development efforts are discussed and a comprehensive curriculum management plan is developed.
Course Attendance: Summer Semester 2008 (May - August)
Professor: Jill Fresen & Olaf Zawacki-Richter
Final Grade: A
Personal Papers: Accelerated Teaching and Learning Course Design
Critical Reflection of the DETT 607 course
Professor: Jill Fresen & Olaf Zawacki-Richter
Final Grade: A
Personal Papers: Accelerated Teaching and Learning Course Design
Critical Reflection of the DETT 607 course
Accelerated Teaching and Learning Course Design June 25th 2008
Executive Summary
University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is the leading online public university in the United States and has been serving adult students for the past 60 years. In order to provide additional flexibility to students and to meet competitive pressures, the School of Undergraduate Studies (SUS) has decided to offer a variety of different start dates and semester lengths for all their stateside online classes starting in the Fall 2008 semester. The SUS faculty will be required to change their current fifteen week online course curriculum into seventeen week, twelve week and ten week classes covering the same course objectives.
In the Fall 2008 semester, the Business and Professional Practices group within SUS plan to offer 520 online courses which will be taught by approximately 340 collegiate and adjunct faculty. Given the large number of faculty, the complexity of changing the current course curriculum, and the teaching pedagogical challenges, Dr John Volpe, Assistant Dean of the Business and Professional Practices group has commissioned an Accelerated Learning and Teaching course.
The course will be designed to assist collegiate and adjunct faculty in developing the skills and knowledge necessary to modify their course curriculum and enhance their teaching pedagogy to facilitate effective and efficient student learning of the course objects within a shorter semester times. In developing these skills the training course is expected to meet a secondary although equally important function of provides collegiate and adjunct faculty with a greater knowledge of best practices in online teaching. The course will delivered in four modules: 1) educational drivers and experiences of shorter semesters; (2) online teaching best practices (3) course design and development; (4) assessment techniques.
The course will be offered on UMUC’s WebTycho learning management system.
Introduction
Background
University of Maryland University College (UMUC) has been serving the education needs of adult students for over 60 years and ranks second in world-wide student enrollment among 4- year degree granting public universities in the United States. UMUC offers a variety of educational formats to meet the needs of busy adult students who have to balance the demands of a full time employment, family, community responsibilities and school. The most popular format is asynchronous online education which in 2007 accounted for 65% of all class enrollments across the United States, Europe and Asia (84% stateside).
UMUC is organized into two schools: School of Undergraduate Studies (SUS) and the Graduate School. In 2007, SUS served over 71,000 undergraduate students across the United States, Europe and Asia. SUS is further broken down into four department Business and Professional Practices (B&PP), Communications, Arts & Humanities (COMM), and Social, Behavioral, Natural and Mathematical Sciences (SCIP).
In order to provide enhanced flexibility to students and to meet competitive pressures, SUS has decided to offer four different start dates and three different semester lengths for all their stateside online classes starting in the Fall 2008 semester. Faculty will be required to change their current fifteen week online course curriculum into seventeen week, twelve week and ten week classes covering the same course objectives.
In the Fall 2008 semester, the Business and Professional Practices group plan to offer 520 online courses which will be taught by approximately 340 collegiate and adjunct faculty. Given the large number of faculty, the complexity of changing the current course curriculum, and the teaching pedagogical challenges, Dr John Volpe, Assistant Dean of the Business and Professional Practices group commissioned a training course to be developed to assist faculty in modifying their course curriculum and enhancing their teaching pedagogy to facilitate effective and efficient student learning of the course objects within the variable semester times.
The faculty training program is to be developed as an online course for three reasons: physical location of faculty, availability of faculty and technology familiarity. The Business & Professional Practices faculty are physically dispersed across the United States and other countries. Seventy percent of the faculty are employed full-time in other institutions thus their time availability is limited. All faculty are familiar with the online technology given their experience as online instructors.
Opportunity Statement / Problem Analysis
The primary gap which the training course is addressing is developing the skills and knowledge necessary to modify course curriculum and to enhance teaching pedagogy to facilitate student learning of the course objects within a shorter semester times. In developing these skills the training course is expected to meet a secondary although equally important function of provides collegiate and adjunct faculty with a greater knowledge in:
The target audience for this training program is the Business & Professional Practices faculty. Ninety percent of the faculty are part-time adjuncts who are practitioners in their respective field.
All of the faculty members have at least a Master’s degree in their field. They are subject matter experts with over ten years industry experience and have on average three years online adjunct teaching experience with UMUC. While they have considerable expertise in the subject matter they have had limited training in education. The extent of teaching training for most faculty is the five week UMUC online new faculty training. Subsequently faculty have developed their teaching skill through doing (trail & error), peer mentors, general input from their Academic Director.
All faculty members use UMUC’s learning management system, Webtycho frequently and are very comfortable with this technology.
Many of the faculty do not live in the Washington DC region, as such their only contact with their Academic Director, teaching peers, and the University is via WebTycho, email and occasional telephone conversations.
Course Content
The course will offer students (UMUC’s Business & Professional Program’s faculty) with a training guide to making effective use of their course content and assessment practices to facilitate student learning of their course objectives in the shorter elapse time. There will be four modules: 1) educational drivers and experiences of shorter semesters; (2) online teaching best practices (3) course design and development; (4) assessment techniques.
The first module is an introductory module aimed at providing students with the rational of why UMUC is changing its current semester lengths. The module will cover the needs of adult students and the distance education competitive pressure. The students will be given readings by and number of scholarly articles on student and faculty experiences with intensive courses. A discussion conference will be assigned for students to debate the challenges and opportunities of shorter semesters. The open dialog on the subject will hopefully to defuse concerns, offer ideas and provide a forum for faculty to highlight to UMUC’s management additional teaching, administrative and support areas that should be addressed.
The second module will provide the best online teaching practices for effective student learning. The module will cover learning and teaching theories and highlight the best online practices from a number of scholarly articles. This module will draw heavily from Bullen & Janes (2006), Quality Matter (2008) and a series of scholarly papers.
The third module will emphasize linking course content with the course objectives. The module will cover the definition of learning objects and outcomes, course content, prioritization of content, dividing content into manageable chunks, and the workload, pacing and rhythm of the content delivery. This module will draw heavily from Bullen & Janes (2006), Quality Matters (2008) and a series of scholarly articles on syllabus construction .
The fourth module will provide students with a broad range of student assessment alternatives and discuss the pros and cons of different methods. Emphasis will be placed on linking the assessment with the course objectives, and discussions will be conducted on when is enough enough? (length of papers, volumes of reading) and the weight of each assessment.
In addition to the course work, the students will get hands on experience in redesigning their existing online classes for a shorter semester.
Goals and Objectives (at the course level) On completion of this course participants will be able to:
Media Analysis
Potential options for delivering the faculty training are:
Learning Design
In constructing the instructional design model, the designer has to take into account the strategies that are most likely to be successful in achieving the learning goals within the target context. Morrison et al. (2007) suggest that to ensure a comprehensive and quality product the designer needs to consider:
Theoretical Background
Two broad categories of learning theory were considered for this course: behavioral and constructivist. Behavioral theory suggests that students are motivated by an external stimulus; “such conditions essentially take the form of positive (reinforcement) or negative (punishment) consequences following a response” (Morrison et al.,2007, p.346). However the behavioral learning theory is more appropriate for inexperienced or low-achieving learners (Kishner et al, 2006; Morrison et al.,2007).
Constructivism has been the dominant theory in adult education over the past decade, and is an appropriate learning theory for experienced faculty. According to constructivist theory “knowledge is being actively constructed by the individual and knowing is an adaptive process, which organizes the individual’s experiential world” (Karahiorgi & Symeou, 2005). The concept that we learn through constructing knowledge from previous learning and experiences is very appropriate for faculty member students.
The implication of utilizing constructivist theory in instructional design is that we need to “search for authentic tasks and let the specific objectives emerge and be realized as they are appropriate to the individual learner in solving the real-world task” (Bednar et al., 1992, p.25). This is very appropriate for this course as the ultimate goal is for faculty in develop the skills and knowledge necessary to modify their course curriculum and enhance their teaching pedagogy to facilitate effective and efficient student learning of their course objects within a shorter semester times. Thus the real-world task in this course will be to ask the students (Business faculty members) to develop the instructional design for shorter semesters within their respective online classes that they currently teach.
Subject Matter Representation
The content will be drawn from a series of scholar articles that will be posted in the online classroom; there will be no text book required for this course, although there will be a number of recommended books listed for further review. Approximately twelve articles will be provided and spread evenly across the four course modules. Students will be encouraged to seek further supplementary material for discussion with their peers. In addition to the course content, the students will also have access to their upcoming online classes such that they can gain hands-on experience in redesigning their existing courses for shorter sessions.
Student Interaction with Course Content
The student will initially interact with the course content by reading. The instructor will use what Gabriel (2006) terms as a developmental perspective which places “knowledge construction, collaboration, and reflection at the heart of what they do” (p. 179). The instructor role is as a facilitator or coach in guiding (not lecturing) the students through the learning concepts. The instructor posts questions for the students to share their knowledge. The student responses provide the instructor a forum to post follow-up questions and comments to help the student gain a deeper level of understanding. Once the students have explored and discussed the learning concepts, they utilize what they have learnt in a “real world” application of redesigning their existing course. This practical application will enable the learners to “move from simpler to more complex understanding of the concepts” Gabriel (2006, p.179). In addition it enables the learners to gain valuable feedback from their peers and instructor.
Interaction among Students.
Collaboration and discussion among students is a key component of the instructional design of this course. This allows students to benefit from the experience of their peers and “to examine an issue from all sides” (Kirschner et al., 2004, p. 7). The student interaction is initially through asynchronous online discussion of the course reading material, and is further enhanced by sharing individual student research and ideas on the learning concept. The next stage of interaction is a process where students critique the redesign of each student’s course on a stage by stage basis.
Assessment Strategies
The assessment strategy is based upon authentic assessment principles. “In an authentic assessment, the student not only completes or demonstrates the desired behavior, but also does it in a real-life context” (Meyers, 1992, p.40). There are no graded assignments or exercises instead the assessment is in the form of feedback both from the instructor and peers on the student’s online course instructional design and learning strategies. As part of this assessment the student must explain the decisions and choices that were made in the course development. This assessment strategy accommodates both a behavioral and constructivist learning paradigms. From a constructivist viewpoint, the group feedback enables the student to fine tune their understanding of the concepts; from a behavioral viewpoint, the student is motivated by praise and the avoidance of criticism from their peers.
Feedback
Constructive feedback is a critical component of this course. The instructor’s feedback in the course material discussions allows him or her to guide the students in the construction of the learning object. The peer feedback in the discussions allows the student to gain a broader perspective on the subject matter. The feedback by the instructor and peers on the student’s online course development allows the student to enhance his or her skills through gaining multiple perspectives and ideas.
Module Design/Outline
Module 1 - Educational Drivers and Experiences of Shorter Semesters
Learning OutcomesOn completion of this module students will be able to:
Daniel, E. L. (2000). A review of time-shortened courses across disciplines. College Student Journal, 34(2), 298-309.
Scott, P. A. (1996). Attributes of high-quality intensive course learning experiences: student voices and experiences. College Student Journal,30(1), 69-77.
Seamon, M. (2004, April). Short and long term differences in instructional effectiveness between intensive and semester length courses. Teachers College Record, 108(4), 852-874..
Individual Activities
The students will read the articles assigned for this module and answer in an online discussion forum questions posed by the instructor. The students will then be encouraged to critique and debate the views of their colleagues.
Assessment
There is no formal assessment in this module. The feedback from the peers and instructor in the discussions provides students the opportunity to assess their knowledge and perspectives against the views of others.
Discussion/Interaction
After reading the material, the students will discuss and debate the following points with their peers and the instructor.
- The preference of students towards intensive courses
- The concerns of faculty towards teaching intensive courses
- The challenges and opportunities of faculty in re-designing their current online courses
Module 2 – Online Teaching Best Practices
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module students will be able to:
Gabriel, M.A. (2006), Towards effective instruction in E-learning environments. In M. Bullen, D.P. James. Making the transition to e-learning: Strategies and issues. Hershey: Information Science Publishing.
Seamon, M. (2004, April). Short and long term differences in instructional effectiveness between intensive and semester length courses. Teachers College Record, 108(4), 852-874..
Dennen, V., Darabi, A., Smith, L. (2007, May). Instructor-learner interaction in online courses: The relative perceived importance of particular instructor actions on performance and satisfaction. Distance Education, 28(1), 65-79.
Cavanaugh, J. (2006). Comparing online time to offline time: The Shocking truth. Distance Education, Vol. 10 (9).
Individual Activities
Over the course of this module the students will:
The feedback in discussions and a critique of the pre-week module and welcoming announcement from the peers and instructor in the discussions is the assessment.
Group Activities
The class will be divided into groups of approximately five students to review and critique the student’s course pre-week module and announcement.
Module 3– Course Design and Development
Learning OutcomesOn completion of this module students will be able to:
Course Resources
Gabriel, M.A. (2006), Towards effective instruction in E-learning environments. In M. Bullen, D.P. James. Making the transition to e-learning: Strategies and issues. Hershey: Information Science Publishing.
Quality Matters Rubric, Quality Matters, MarylandOnline, Retrieved June 6th 2008 http://www.QualityMatters.org
Becker, A.H., Calhoon, S.K.(1999). What Introductory Psychology Students Attend to on a Course Syllabus, Teaching of Psychology, Vol. 26, no. 1, p.6-11.
Parkes, J., Harris, M.B.(2002). The Purpose of a Syllabus, College Teaching, Vol. 50, no. 2, p. 55-61.
Individual ActivitiesOver the course of this module the students will:
1. read the articles assigned for this module and answer in an online discussion forum questions posed by the instructor. The students will then be encouraged to critique and debate the views of their colleagues.
2. research other scholarly articles for further group information and discussion.
3. re-conceptualize their current online course syllabus, focusing on linking the course content strategies to the course objectives and splitting activities into evenly paced modules throughout the semester.
Assessment
The feedback in discussions and the critique of the course content breakdown in the course syllabus from the peers and instructor in the discussions is the assessment.
Discussion/Interaction
After reading the material, the students will discuss and debate the following points with their peers and the instructor.
- Discuss the process they use to structure the course content to the course objectives.
- Discuss their philosophies in developing a syllabus
Group Activities
The groups that were formed in module 2 will review and critique how the student’s course contents links with the course objectives and course flow and schedule.
Module 4: Assessment Techniques
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module students will be able to:
1. Describe effective online assessment strategies
2. Link course assessment to course objectives
3. Develop a course curriculum for shorter semester lengths
Course Resources
Gaytan, J.,McEwen, B.C. (2007). Effective online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education. Vol. 21. no. 3, p117-132
Individual Activities
Over the course of this module the students will:
1. read the articles assigned for this module and answer in an online discussion forum questions posed by the instructor. The students will then be encouraged to critique and debate the views of their colleagues.
2. research other scholarly articles for further group information and discussion.
3. develop an assessment strategy approach for their course.
4. complete the course syllabus (include the grading information and term project sections)
Assessment
The feedback in discussions and critique of the assessment strategy and complete course syllabus from the peers and instructor in the discussions is the assessment.
Discussion/Interaction
After reading the material, the students will discuss and debate the following points with their peers and the instructor.
- What they have found to be most effective assessment strategy in their online teaching experiences.
- The key learning that they have taken away from this course.
Group Activities
The groups that were formed in module 2 will review and critique each student’s assessment strategy and complete course syllabus.
References
Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Becker, A.H., Calhoon, S.K.(1999). What Introductory Psychology Students Attend to on a Course Syllabus, Teaching of Psychology, Vol. 26, no. 1, p.6-11.
Bednar, A., Cunningham, D. et al (1992). Theory into Practice: How do we link?. In Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction, (pp. 17 - 34). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum.
Bullen, M., Janes, D.P. (2007). Making the transition to E-Learning: Strategies & Issues. Hersey PA: Information Science Publications.
Holmberg, B. (2005). The evolution, principles and practices of distance education. Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg.
Gaytan, J.,McEwen, B.C. (2007). Effective online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education. Vol. 21. no. 3, p117-132
Gabriel, M.A. (2006), Towards effective instruction in E-learning environments. In M. Bullen, D.P. James. Making the transition to e-learning: Strategies and issues. Hershey: Information Science Publishing.
Karagiorgi, Y. & Symeou, L. (2005). Translating constructivism into instructional design: potential and limitations. Educational Technology and Society, 8(1), 17 - 27.
Kirschner, P.A., Martens, R.L., & Strijbos, J.W. (2004). CSCL in higher education?: a framework for designing multiple collaborative environments. In What we know about CSCL and implementing it in higher education, (pp. 3-30). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work. Educational Psychologist,41(2), 75-86.Moore, M., & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance education: A systems view (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Meyer, C. A. (1992). What's the Difference between authentic and performance assessment. Educational Leadership, 49(8), 39-40.
Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction (5th ed. ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Parkes, J., Harris, M.B.(2002). The Purpose of a Syllabus, College Teaching, Vol. 50, no. 2, p. 55-61.
Quality Matters Rubric, Quality Matters, MarylandOnline, Retreived June 6th 2008 http://www.QualityMatters.org
Slattery, J.M., Carlson, J.F.(2005). Preparing an Effective Syllabus: Current Best Practices, College Teaching, Vol. 53. no. 4, p.159-164.
University of Maryland University College (2004). UMUC Overview. Retrieved June 5th 2008 from Wide World Web site http://www.umuc.edu/aboutus.shtml
University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is the leading online public university in the United States and has been serving adult students for the past 60 years. In order to provide additional flexibility to students and to meet competitive pressures, the School of Undergraduate Studies (SUS) has decided to offer a variety of different start dates and semester lengths for all their stateside online classes starting in the Fall 2008 semester. The SUS faculty will be required to change their current fifteen week online course curriculum into seventeen week, twelve week and ten week classes covering the same course objectives.
In the Fall 2008 semester, the Business and Professional Practices group within SUS plan to offer 520 online courses which will be taught by approximately 340 collegiate and adjunct faculty. Given the large number of faculty, the complexity of changing the current course curriculum, and the teaching pedagogical challenges, Dr John Volpe, Assistant Dean of the Business and Professional Practices group has commissioned an Accelerated Learning and Teaching course.
The course will be designed to assist collegiate and adjunct faculty in developing the skills and knowledge necessary to modify their course curriculum and enhance their teaching pedagogy to facilitate effective and efficient student learning of the course objects within a shorter semester times. In developing these skills the training course is expected to meet a secondary although equally important function of provides collegiate and adjunct faculty with a greater knowledge of best practices in online teaching. The course will delivered in four modules: 1) educational drivers and experiences of shorter semesters; (2) online teaching best practices (3) course design and development; (4) assessment techniques.
The course will be offered on UMUC’s WebTycho learning management system.
Introduction
Background
University of Maryland University College (UMUC) has been serving the education needs of adult students for over 60 years and ranks second in world-wide student enrollment among 4- year degree granting public universities in the United States. UMUC offers a variety of educational formats to meet the needs of busy adult students who have to balance the demands of a full time employment, family, community responsibilities and school. The most popular format is asynchronous online education which in 2007 accounted for 65% of all class enrollments across the United States, Europe and Asia (84% stateside).
UMUC is organized into two schools: School of Undergraduate Studies (SUS) and the Graduate School. In 2007, SUS served over 71,000 undergraduate students across the United States, Europe and Asia. SUS is further broken down into four department Business and Professional Practices (B&PP), Communications, Arts & Humanities (COMM), and Social, Behavioral, Natural and Mathematical Sciences (SCIP).
In order to provide enhanced flexibility to students and to meet competitive pressures, SUS has decided to offer four different start dates and three different semester lengths for all their stateside online classes starting in the Fall 2008 semester. Faculty will be required to change their current fifteen week online course curriculum into seventeen week, twelve week and ten week classes covering the same course objectives.
In the Fall 2008 semester, the Business and Professional Practices group plan to offer 520 online courses which will be taught by approximately 340 collegiate and adjunct faculty. Given the large number of faculty, the complexity of changing the current course curriculum, and the teaching pedagogical challenges, Dr John Volpe, Assistant Dean of the Business and Professional Practices group commissioned a training course to be developed to assist faculty in modifying their course curriculum and enhancing their teaching pedagogy to facilitate effective and efficient student learning of the course objects within the variable semester times.
The faculty training program is to be developed as an online course for three reasons: physical location of faculty, availability of faculty and technology familiarity. The Business & Professional Practices faculty are physically dispersed across the United States and other countries. Seventy percent of the faculty are employed full-time in other institutions thus their time availability is limited. All faculty are familiar with the online technology given their experience as online instructors.
Opportunity Statement / Problem Analysis
The primary gap which the training course is addressing is developing the skills and knowledge necessary to modify course curriculum and to enhance teaching pedagogy to facilitate student learning of the course objects within a shorter semester times. In developing these skills the training course is expected to meet a secondary although equally important function of provides collegiate and adjunct faculty with a greater knowledge in:
- Effective curriculum construction.
- Effective online teaching practices.
- A broad range of student assessment approaches
- Effective well-paced syllabus construction.
The target audience for this training program is the Business & Professional Practices faculty. Ninety percent of the faculty are part-time adjuncts who are practitioners in their respective field.
All of the faculty members have at least a Master’s degree in their field. They are subject matter experts with over ten years industry experience and have on average three years online adjunct teaching experience with UMUC. While they have considerable expertise in the subject matter they have had limited training in education. The extent of teaching training for most faculty is the five week UMUC online new faculty training. Subsequently faculty have developed their teaching skill through doing (trail & error), peer mentors, general input from their Academic Director.
All faculty members use UMUC’s learning management system, Webtycho frequently and are very comfortable with this technology.
Many of the faculty do not live in the Washington DC region, as such their only contact with their Academic Director, teaching peers, and the University is via WebTycho, email and occasional telephone conversations.
Course Content
The course will offer students (UMUC’s Business & Professional Program’s faculty) with a training guide to making effective use of their course content and assessment practices to facilitate student learning of their course objectives in the shorter elapse time. There will be four modules: 1) educational drivers and experiences of shorter semesters; (2) online teaching best practices (3) course design and development; (4) assessment techniques.
The first module is an introductory module aimed at providing students with the rational of why UMUC is changing its current semester lengths. The module will cover the needs of adult students and the distance education competitive pressure. The students will be given readings by and number of scholarly articles on student and faculty experiences with intensive courses. A discussion conference will be assigned for students to debate the challenges and opportunities of shorter semesters. The open dialog on the subject will hopefully to defuse concerns, offer ideas and provide a forum for faculty to highlight to UMUC’s management additional teaching, administrative and support areas that should be addressed.
The second module will provide the best online teaching practices for effective student learning. The module will cover learning and teaching theories and highlight the best online practices from a number of scholarly articles. This module will draw heavily from Bullen & Janes (2006), Quality Matter (2008) and a series of scholarly papers.
The third module will emphasize linking course content with the course objectives. The module will cover the definition of learning objects and outcomes, course content, prioritization of content, dividing content into manageable chunks, and the workload, pacing and rhythm of the content delivery. This module will draw heavily from Bullen & Janes (2006), Quality Matters (2008) and a series of scholarly articles on syllabus construction .
The fourth module will provide students with a broad range of student assessment alternatives and discuss the pros and cons of different methods. Emphasis will be placed on linking the assessment with the course objectives, and discussions will be conducted on when is enough enough? (length of papers, volumes of reading) and the weight of each assessment.
In addition to the course work, the students will get hands on experience in redesigning their existing online classes for a shorter semester.
Goals and Objectives (at the course level) On completion of this course participants will be able to:
- Describe the educational environment which is driving shorter semester lengths.
- Describe the course curriculum and teaching pedagogical challenges and opportunities of shorter semester lengths.
- Analyze the important factors in current course.
- Link course content to course objectives
- Split course content into well defined, evenly paced chunks.
- Describe effective online assessment strategies
- Link course assessment to course objectives
- Develop a course curriculum for shorter semester lengths
- Describe effective teaching practices.
- Describe the time commitment in hours per week of students taking a shorter semester length class.
- Describe the time commitment in hours per week of faculty teaching a shorter semester length class.
Media Analysis
Potential options for delivering the faculty training are:
- One day face to face course
- Synchronous online course
- Asynchronous online course
Learning Design
In constructing the instructional design model, the designer has to take into account the strategies that are most likely to be successful in achieving the learning goals within the target context. Morrison et al. (2007) suggest that to ensure a comprehensive and quality product the designer needs to consider:
- “Learning Theory: How do you learn
- Instructional Theory: How you ensure the desired learning occurs
- Instructional Design model: How you apply instructional theory to create an effective lesson or unit.” (p.344).
Theoretical Background
Two broad categories of learning theory were considered for this course: behavioral and constructivist. Behavioral theory suggests that students are motivated by an external stimulus; “such conditions essentially take the form of positive (reinforcement) or negative (punishment) consequences following a response” (Morrison et al.,2007, p.346). However the behavioral learning theory is more appropriate for inexperienced or low-achieving learners (Kishner et al, 2006; Morrison et al.,2007).
Constructivism has been the dominant theory in adult education over the past decade, and is an appropriate learning theory for experienced faculty. According to constructivist theory “knowledge is being actively constructed by the individual and knowing is an adaptive process, which organizes the individual’s experiential world” (Karahiorgi & Symeou, 2005). The concept that we learn through constructing knowledge from previous learning and experiences is very appropriate for faculty member students.
The implication of utilizing constructivist theory in instructional design is that we need to “search for authentic tasks and let the specific objectives emerge and be realized as they are appropriate to the individual learner in solving the real-world task” (Bednar et al., 1992, p.25). This is very appropriate for this course as the ultimate goal is for faculty in develop the skills and knowledge necessary to modify their course curriculum and enhance their teaching pedagogy to facilitate effective and efficient student learning of their course objects within a shorter semester times. Thus the real-world task in this course will be to ask the students (Business faculty members) to develop the instructional design for shorter semesters within their respective online classes that they currently teach.
Subject Matter Representation
The content will be drawn from a series of scholar articles that will be posted in the online classroom; there will be no text book required for this course, although there will be a number of recommended books listed for further review. Approximately twelve articles will be provided and spread evenly across the four course modules. Students will be encouraged to seek further supplementary material for discussion with their peers. In addition to the course content, the students will also have access to their upcoming online classes such that they can gain hands-on experience in redesigning their existing courses for shorter sessions.
Student Interaction with Course Content
The student will initially interact with the course content by reading. The instructor will use what Gabriel (2006) terms as a developmental perspective which places “knowledge construction, collaboration, and reflection at the heart of what they do” (p. 179). The instructor role is as a facilitator or coach in guiding (not lecturing) the students through the learning concepts. The instructor posts questions for the students to share their knowledge. The student responses provide the instructor a forum to post follow-up questions and comments to help the student gain a deeper level of understanding. Once the students have explored and discussed the learning concepts, they utilize what they have learnt in a “real world” application of redesigning their existing course. This practical application will enable the learners to “move from simpler to more complex understanding of the concepts” Gabriel (2006, p.179). In addition it enables the learners to gain valuable feedback from their peers and instructor.
Interaction among Students.
Collaboration and discussion among students is a key component of the instructional design of this course. This allows students to benefit from the experience of their peers and “to examine an issue from all sides” (Kirschner et al., 2004, p. 7). The student interaction is initially through asynchronous online discussion of the course reading material, and is further enhanced by sharing individual student research and ideas on the learning concept. The next stage of interaction is a process where students critique the redesign of each student’s course on a stage by stage basis.
Assessment Strategies
The assessment strategy is based upon authentic assessment principles. “In an authentic assessment, the student not only completes or demonstrates the desired behavior, but also does it in a real-life context” (Meyers, 1992, p.40). There are no graded assignments or exercises instead the assessment is in the form of feedback both from the instructor and peers on the student’s online course instructional design and learning strategies. As part of this assessment the student must explain the decisions and choices that were made in the course development. This assessment strategy accommodates both a behavioral and constructivist learning paradigms. From a constructivist viewpoint, the group feedback enables the student to fine tune their understanding of the concepts; from a behavioral viewpoint, the student is motivated by praise and the avoidance of criticism from their peers.
Feedback
Constructive feedback is a critical component of this course. The instructor’s feedback in the course material discussions allows him or her to guide the students in the construction of the learning object. The peer feedback in the discussions allows the student to gain a broader perspective on the subject matter. The feedback by the instructor and peers on the student’s online course development allows the student to enhance his or her skills through gaining multiple perspectives and ideas.
Module Design/Outline
Module 1 - Educational Drivers and Experiences of Shorter Semesters
Learning OutcomesOn completion of this module students will be able to:
- Describe the educational environment which is driving shorter semester lengths.
- Describe the course curriculum and teaching pedagogical challenges and opportunities of shorter semester lengths.
- Describe the experiences of educators and students in shorter semester classes
Daniel, E. L. (2000). A review of time-shortened courses across disciplines. College Student Journal, 34(2), 298-309.
Scott, P. A. (1996). Attributes of high-quality intensive course learning experiences: student voices and experiences. College Student Journal,30(1), 69-77.
Seamon, M. (2004, April). Short and long term differences in instructional effectiveness between intensive and semester length courses. Teachers College Record, 108(4), 852-874..
Individual Activities
The students will read the articles assigned for this module and answer in an online discussion forum questions posed by the instructor. The students will then be encouraged to critique and debate the views of their colleagues.
Assessment
There is no formal assessment in this module. The feedback from the peers and instructor in the discussions provides students the opportunity to assess their knowledge and perspectives against the views of others.
Discussion/Interaction
After reading the material, the students will discuss and debate the following points with their peers and the instructor.
- The preference of students towards intensive courses
- The concerns of faculty towards teaching intensive courses
- The challenges and opportunities of faculty in re-designing their current online courses
Module 2 – Online Teaching Best Practices
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module students will be able to:
- Describe effective online teaching practices.
- Describe the time commitment in hours per week of students taking a shorter semester length class.
- Describe the time commitment in hours per week of faculty teaching a shorter semester length class.
Gabriel, M.A. (2006), Towards effective instruction in E-learning environments. In M. Bullen, D.P. James. Making the transition to e-learning: Strategies and issues. Hershey: Information Science Publishing.
Seamon, M. (2004, April). Short and long term differences in instructional effectiveness between intensive and semester length courses. Teachers College Record, 108(4), 852-874..
Dennen, V., Darabi, A., Smith, L. (2007, May). Instructor-learner interaction in online courses: The relative perceived importance of particular instructor actions on performance and satisfaction. Distance Education, 28(1), 65-79.
Cavanaugh, J. (2006). Comparing online time to offline time: The Shocking truth. Distance Education, Vol. 10 (9).
Individual Activities
Over the course of this module the students will:
- read the articles assigned for this module and answer in an online discussion forum questions posed by the instructor. The students will then be encouraged to critique and debate the views of their colleagues.
- research other scholarly articles for further group information and discussion.
- create a pre-week module in their classroom to introduce students to the course and to highlight the expectations in terms of student’s time commitment in hours per week throughout their course
- create a welcoming announcement in their classroom
The feedback in discussions and a critique of the pre-week module and welcoming announcement from the peers and instructor in the discussions is the assessment.
Group Activities
The class will be divided into groups of approximately five students to review and critique the student’s course pre-week module and announcement.
Module 3– Course Design and Development
Learning OutcomesOn completion of this module students will be able to:
- Analyze the important factors in current course.
- Link course content to course objectives
- Split course content into well defined, evenly paced chunks.
Course Resources
Gabriel, M.A. (2006), Towards effective instruction in E-learning environments. In M. Bullen, D.P. James. Making the transition to e-learning: Strategies and issues. Hershey: Information Science Publishing.
Quality Matters Rubric, Quality Matters, MarylandOnline, Retrieved June 6th 2008 http://www.QualityMatters.org
Becker, A.H., Calhoon, S.K.(1999). What Introductory Psychology Students Attend to on a Course Syllabus, Teaching of Psychology, Vol. 26, no. 1, p.6-11.
Parkes, J., Harris, M.B.(2002). The Purpose of a Syllabus, College Teaching, Vol. 50, no. 2, p. 55-61.
Individual ActivitiesOver the course of this module the students will:
1. read the articles assigned for this module and answer in an online discussion forum questions posed by the instructor. The students will then be encouraged to critique and debate the views of their colleagues.
2. research other scholarly articles for further group information and discussion.
3. re-conceptualize their current online course syllabus, focusing on linking the course content strategies to the course objectives and splitting activities into evenly paced modules throughout the semester.
Assessment
The feedback in discussions and the critique of the course content breakdown in the course syllabus from the peers and instructor in the discussions is the assessment.
Discussion/Interaction
After reading the material, the students will discuss and debate the following points with their peers and the instructor.
- Discuss the process they use to structure the course content to the course objectives.
- Discuss their philosophies in developing a syllabus
Group Activities
The groups that were formed in module 2 will review and critique how the student’s course contents links with the course objectives and course flow and schedule.
Module 4: Assessment Techniques
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module students will be able to:
1. Describe effective online assessment strategies
2. Link course assessment to course objectives
3. Develop a course curriculum for shorter semester lengths
Course Resources
Gaytan, J.,McEwen, B.C. (2007). Effective online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education. Vol. 21. no. 3, p117-132
Individual Activities
Over the course of this module the students will:
1. read the articles assigned for this module and answer in an online discussion forum questions posed by the instructor. The students will then be encouraged to critique and debate the views of their colleagues.
2. research other scholarly articles for further group information and discussion.
3. develop an assessment strategy approach for their course.
4. complete the course syllabus (include the grading information and term project sections)
Assessment
The feedback in discussions and critique of the assessment strategy and complete course syllabus from the peers and instructor in the discussions is the assessment.
Discussion/Interaction
After reading the material, the students will discuss and debate the following points with their peers and the instructor.
- What they have found to be most effective assessment strategy in their online teaching experiences.
- The key learning that they have taken away from this course.
Group Activities
The groups that were formed in module 2 will review and critique each student’s assessment strategy and complete course syllabus.
References
Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Becker, A.H., Calhoon, S.K.(1999). What Introductory Psychology Students Attend to on a Course Syllabus, Teaching of Psychology, Vol. 26, no. 1, p.6-11.
Bednar, A., Cunningham, D. et al (1992). Theory into Practice: How do we link?. In Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction, (pp. 17 - 34). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum.
Bullen, M., Janes, D.P. (2007). Making the transition to E-Learning: Strategies & Issues. Hersey PA: Information Science Publications.
Holmberg, B. (2005). The evolution, principles and practices of distance education. Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg.
Gaytan, J.,McEwen, B.C. (2007). Effective online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education. Vol. 21. no. 3, p117-132
Gabriel, M.A. (2006), Towards effective instruction in E-learning environments. In M. Bullen, D.P. James. Making the transition to e-learning: Strategies and issues. Hershey: Information Science Publishing.
Karagiorgi, Y. & Symeou, L. (2005). Translating constructivism into instructional design: potential and limitations. Educational Technology and Society, 8(1), 17 - 27.
Kirschner, P.A., Martens, R.L., & Strijbos, J.W. (2004). CSCL in higher education?: a framework for designing multiple collaborative environments. In What we know about CSCL and implementing it in higher education, (pp. 3-30). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work. Educational Psychologist,41(2), 75-86.Moore, M., & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance education: A systems view (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Meyer, C. A. (1992). What's the Difference between authentic and performance assessment. Educational Leadership, 49(8), 39-40.
Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction (5th ed. ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Parkes, J., Harris, M.B.(2002). The Purpose of a Syllabus, College Teaching, Vol. 50, no. 2, p. 55-61.
Quality Matters Rubric, Quality Matters, MarylandOnline, Retreived June 6th 2008 http://www.QualityMatters.org
Slattery, J.M., Carlson, J.F.(2005). Preparing an Effective Syllabus: Current Best Practices, College Teaching, Vol. 53. no. 4, p.159-164.
University of Maryland University College (2004). UMUC Overview. Retrieved June 5th 2008 from Wide World Web site http://www.umuc.edu/aboutus.shtml
Critical Reflections of the DETT 607 course July 30th 2008
Introduction
While I have had four years of experience teaching online, I have had no formal training other than UMUC’s CTL201A Teaching with WebTycho course which I took at the start of my venture into teaching. Since then I have been using the “seat of the pants” method of course design and development: trial and error. While this method has been reasonably successful based upon student feedback and evaluations, I was excited about taking the DETT 607 Instructional Design and Course Development in Distance Education course, so that I could learn the correct way of designing and developing my course. In doing so, I hope to, not only improve my knowledge and skills but to make my classes more beneficial to my students. This essay is a critical reflection of my journey through the DETT 607 course.
Context Analysis
In reading the initial chapters of Morrison, Ross & Kemp (2007), I was struck by the clear logical sequencing of the design process and depth of analysis. While I had never formally conducted a contextual analysis, I realized that subconsciously I had been performing a very crude analysis. My subconscious analysis went something like this: I knew my students were adults and had multiple responsibilities so I tried to give them a lot of advanced warning in assignments and be as flexible as possible in dates; I’m teaching in the evening so I knew I had to be upbeat, engaging and maximizing interaction to keep them awake; the classroom has basic facilities so I knew I had better bring my own video and slide projector; and finally to stimulate interest I knew I had better make my presentation relevant to their careers and also engage in student discussion so that we can share from each other.
The very comprehensive breakdown of the types of analysis that should be evaluated: needs, goals, performance, learner, contextual, task and procedural, in Morrison, Ross and Kemp (2007) reinforced to me the critical nature of the analysis phase and inspired me to move my current subconscious analysis to a much more in-depth conscious analysis.
The biggest challenge for me at this stage was in selecting my topic for the online distance learning course that we would be developing throughout the course. Recognizing my choice would not just influence the initial contextual analysis but the learning design, and prototype course assignment, I gave this a lot of thought based upon the first principle I learnt in this course: good up-front analysis will save you a lot of problems later. My initial thoughts were to utilize one of the courses that I currently teach. However, I rejected this based upon the view that I would be too much influenced by what I had created in the past and while it may have been easier from a work load viewpoint it would not cause me to delve deeply into the course material and thus limit my learning. Fortunately at this time I attended a meeting at UMUC discussing the faculty course design challenges of the fall 2008 undergraduate multiple length semesters especially in collapsing our traditionally 15 week course to 10 weeks. There was a lot of frustration and anxiousness by many faculty on the feasibility of doing this. This gave me the idea of developing a training course to help faculty develop a comprehensive process to shorten their course lengths. This idea had a double benefit for me, in that it allowed me to work through the DETT 607 course learning and also forced me to do some research into accelerated teaching pedagogy. In addition, the faculty meeting gave me some excellent insight into the characteristic of my project audience (undergraduate faculty) and the need for the training.
The Assignment 1 & 2 template was extremely useful in completing the first assignment as the template headings followed a step-by-step approach to contextual analysis. As earlier discussed I was quite familiar with the target audience and the course objectives, the biggest challenge was in developing the course content which required a significant amount of research. Although my research at this point was limited by the time pressure of completing the assignment on time.
Learning DesignThis was the most challenging and the most rewarding section of the course for me. The challenge being the amount of course readings plus the readings that I needed to do to research the learning topic for the design. However the course readings were and will be very useful as I develop future courses. I found the expanded performance-content matrix in Morrison et al. (2007, p.148-160) as an excellent way to focus on the objectives of the course and relate the assignment materials to the map in the matrix. The readings and discussion on constructivism was especially useful since the MDE program, and in fact most UMUC courses, are based upon constructivist principles. The readings by Karagiorgi, & Symeou (2005) and Lebow (1994) were insightful in emphasizing the principle of making the subject matter relevant to the student. This is a principle that I will really try to emphasize in my course construction in the future. I was really pleased that Olaf brought in the Kirschner et al. (2006) paper to act as a counter perspective to the euphoria on constructivism especially since I was raised in a direct teaching style and always felt slightly uncomfortable with constructivism. The debate highlighted to me that selecting the balance between direct strong instructional guidance and minimal guidance requires an in-depth understanding of the skills and knowledge level of the learner, that is a comprehensive context analysis.
The research into the subject matter of my course was also very insightful and rewarding to me. Something that has amazed me on returning to academia is the depth and breath of research available on almost any subject. In my course topic research, I found a number of research papers on instructional effectiveness in intensive course learning (Scott, 1996; Seamon, 2004) and assessment strategies (Gaytan, 2007). These papers coupled with the learning from the DETT 607 course and previous MDE classes enabled me to put together what I felt to be a comprehensive and insightful training course for faculty. The process of putting this course together, although painful at times, really helped me to fully integrate and appreciate the power of formal design and development process.
Prototype Course
Given that I am already teach online using WebTycho, the process of populating a class is quite familiar to me. The challenging part being that the Nighthawk platform didn’t have the TFE feature. This seemed to be quite absurd to me given that the Nighthawk platform is used as the training ground for new UMUC faculty members so not supporting the WebTycho editor is a major deficiency. Since I have found that color makes the classroom not only more aesthetically pleasing but enables the instructor to convey a clearer message, the lack of TFE inspired me to relearn how to generate HTML code. Whether or not the half day I spent doing this was a productive use of time is questionable, but it did allow me to submit an aesthetically pleasing product.
The fact that we worked in groups, albeit a group of two, I found very enjoyable. First my peer being an English major corrected all my grammar and spelling which I really appreciated but it reminded me to be much more careful in the writing in my regular courses where I don’t have the excellent feedback. Secondly, getting feedback that something is unclear in an area that you believe is clear, help me to reflect on the challenges of clarity. As a future suggestion, in order to get a greater perspective I think it would have been more helpful to have groups of five or six as oppose to two or three.
The major learning I had in this phase of the project was how many of peers were highly unsatisfied with the WebTycho platform so much so that a number requested to move to another Learning Management System. I have been using WebTycho now for a few years and have found it adequate, however clearly based on the reaction WebTycho is starting to get bypassed by higher capability platforms which should be a concern for UMUC.
In the readings I especially liked Bates & Poole (2003) discussion of the neats and scruffies, as it reminded me that I started this course as a scruff and through the learning in this course I am moving in the direction of a neat. This being reinforced by Moore & Kearsley, (2005) who maintain that essential features of the planning process are to have clear goals and objectives, good structure, small manageable units, and repetition, feedback and evaluation Another key point from Moore & Kearsley (2005) was that “teaching effectiveness is also greatly enhanced through the organization and presentation of the course material…….the most important considerations are readability, usability and information complexity” (p. 116). These points reinforced the practical experience in the prototype course project.
Class Discussions
Overall I found the class discussion disappointing; largely due to the fact there was little guidance to the critical topic matters that should be discussed. Maybe it is due to the fact that I have been largely educated under the direct instructional style, I find a general conference that invites students to simply talk about the readings, too broad, and students including myself just post a few points in an article they are reading without any deep thought into the relevance of the subject matter. The conferences where specific questions were posted by the faculty member created a more comprehensive discussion and deeper group learning.
Required Reading
The course textbook, Morrison et al. (2007) is excellent, I know I will be using it as a reference for many years to come. In addition, the supplemental readings were useful and relevant and helped to build my knowledge in online teaching and learning. My critique is that the volume was overwhelming in some weeks, causing me to skim some of the chapters and articles. While I have every intention of going back and reading some of the areas in more detail, it would be helpful especially in shortened summer courses to give a more focused guidelines to the readings to ensure we cover the critical elements. My feeling of being overwhelmed may have been also due to the additional extensive research and readings into my learning topic.
Conclusion
A great benefit of writing a reflective paper is that it requires one to “reflect”. Overall I feel I have learnt a tremendous amount in this course, it has really helped me to think more deeply about the whole instructional design process. The practical ‘hands-on’ approach of taking us through the Instructional Design process in the assignments was extremely useful. While the course validated many of things I was doing, it highlighted the areas in which I need to focus, namely putting much more emphasis in the up-front analysis and course design. Although my choice of topic for the course development created a significant amount of work, I found was also quite beneficial in that it reinforced some of the concepts in this course and other MDE courses I have taken, and most importantly it has helped me in my teaching.
References
Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kalyuga, S., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2001). Learner experience and efficiency of instructional guidance. Educational Psychology, 21(1), 5-23.
Karagiorgi, & Symeou (2005). Translating Constructivism into Instructional Design: Potential and Limitations. Educational Technology and Society, 8(1), 17 - 27. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from Educational Technology and Society Web site: http://www.ifets.info/journals/8_1/5.pdf
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J. & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching, Educational Psychologist, 41 (2), 75-86 .
Lebow, (1994). Constructivist values for instructional systems design: Five principles toward a new mindset.Educational Technology Research and Development, 41(3), 4-16
Moore, M., & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance education: A systems view (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction (5th ed. ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Gaytan, J.,McEwen, B.C. (2007). Effective online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education. Vol. 21. no. 3, p117-132
Scott, P. A. (1996). Attributes of high-quality intensive course learning experiences: student voices and experiences. College Student Journal,30(1), 69-77.
Seamon, M. (2004, April). Short and long term differences in instructional effectiveness between intensive and semester length courses. Teachers College Record, 108(4), 852-874.
While I have had four years of experience teaching online, I have had no formal training other than UMUC’s CTL201A Teaching with WebTycho course which I took at the start of my venture into teaching. Since then I have been using the “seat of the pants” method of course design and development: trial and error. While this method has been reasonably successful based upon student feedback and evaluations, I was excited about taking the DETT 607 Instructional Design and Course Development in Distance Education course, so that I could learn the correct way of designing and developing my course. In doing so, I hope to, not only improve my knowledge and skills but to make my classes more beneficial to my students. This essay is a critical reflection of my journey through the DETT 607 course.
Context Analysis
In reading the initial chapters of Morrison, Ross & Kemp (2007), I was struck by the clear logical sequencing of the design process and depth of analysis. While I had never formally conducted a contextual analysis, I realized that subconsciously I had been performing a very crude analysis. My subconscious analysis went something like this: I knew my students were adults and had multiple responsibilities so I tried to give them a lot of advanced warning in assignments and be as flexible as possible in dates; I’m teaching in the evening so I knew I had to be upbeat, engaging and maximizing interaction to keep them awake; the classroom has basic facilities so I knew I had better bring my own video and slide projector; and finally to stimulate interest I knew I had better make my presentation relevant to their careers and also engage in student discussion so that we can share from each other.
The very comprehensive breakdown of the types of analysis that should be evaluated: needs, goals, performance, learner, contextual, task and procedural, in Morrison, Ross and Kemp (2007) reinforced to me the critical nature of the analysis phase and inspired me to move my current subconscious analysis to a much more in-depth conscious analysis.
The biggest challenge for me at this stage was in selecting my topic for the online distance learning course that we would be developing throughout the course. Recognizing my choice would not just influence the initial contextual analysis but the learning design, and prototype course assignment, I gave this a lot of thought based upon the first principle I learnt in this course: good up-front analysis will save you a lot of problems later. My initial thoughts were to utilize one of the courses that I currently teach. However, I rejected this based upon the view that I would be too much influenced by what I had created in the past and while it may have been easier from a work load viewpoint it would not cause me to delve deeply into the course material and thus limit my learning. Fortunately at this time I attended a meeting at UMUC discussing the faculty course design challenges of the fall 2008 undergraduate multiple length semesters especially in collapsing our traditionally 15 week course to 10 weeks. There was a lot of frustration and anxiousness by many faculty on the feasibility of doing this. This gave me the idea of developing a training course to help faculty develop a comprehensive process to shorten their course lengths. This idea had a double benefit for me, in that it allowed me to work through the DETT 607 course learning and also forced me to do some research into accelerated teaching pedagogy. In addition, the faculty meeting gave me some excellent insight into the characteristic of my project audience (undergraduate faculty) and the need for the training.
The Assignment 1 & 2 template was extremely useful in completing the first assignment as the template headings followed a step-by-step approach to contextual analysis. As earlier discussed I was quite familiar with the target audience and the course objectives, the biggest challenge was in developing the course content which required a significant amount of research. Although my research at this point was limited by the time pressure of completing the assignment on time.
Learning DesignThis was the most challenging and the most rewarding section of the course for me. The challenge being the amount of course readings plus the readings that I needed to do to research the learning topic for the design. However the course readings were and will be very useful as I develop future courses. I found the expanded performance-content matrix in Morrison et al. (2007, p.148-160) as an excellent way to focus on the objectives of the course and relate the assignment materials to the map in the matrix. The readings and discussion on constructivism was especially useful since the MDE program, and in fact most UMUC courses, are based upon constructivist principles. The readings by Karagiorgi, & Symeou (2005) and Lebow (1994) were insightful in emphasizing the principle of making the subject matter relevant to the student. This is a principle that I will really try to emphasize in my course construction in the future. I was really pleased that Olaf brought in the Kirschner et al. (2006) paper to act as a counter perspective to the euphoria on constructivism especially since I was raised in a direct teaching style and always felt slightly uncomfortable with constructivism. The debate highlighted to me that selecting the balance between direct strong instructional guidance and minimal guidance requires an in-depth understanding of the skills and knowledge level of the learner, that is a comprehensive context analysis.
The research into the subject matter of my course was also very insightful and rewarding to me. Something that has amazed me on returning to academia is the depth and breath of research available on almost any subject. In my course topic research, I found a number of research papers on instructional effectiveness in intensive course learning (Scott, 1996; Seamon, 2004) and assessment strategies (Gaytan, 2007). These papers coupled with the learning from the DETT 607 course and previous MDE classes enabled me to put together what I felt to be a comprehensive and insightful training course for faculty. The process of putting this course together, although painful at times, really helped me to fully integrate and appreciate the power of formal design and development process.
Prototype Course
Given that I am already teach online using WebTycho, the process of populating a class is quite familiar to me. The challenging part being that the Nighthawk platform didn’t have the TFE feature. This seemed to be quite absurd to me given that the Nighthawk platform is used as the training ground for new UMUC faculty members so not supporting the WebTycho editor is a major deficiency. Since I have found that color makes the classroom not only more aesthetically pleasing but enables the instructor to convey a clearer message, the lack of TFE inspired me to relearn how to generate HTML code. Whether or not the half day I spent doing this was a productive use of time is questionable, but it did allow me to submit an aesthetically pleasing product.
The fact that we worked in groups, albeit a group of two, I found very enjoyable. First my peer being an English major corrected all my grammar and spelling which I really appreciated but it reminded me to be much more careful in the writing in my regular courses where I don’t have the excellent feedback. Secondly, getting feedback that something is unclear in an area that you believe is clear, help me to reflect on the challenges of clarity. As a future suggestion, in order to get a greater perspective I think it would have been more helpful to have groups of five or six as oppose to two or three.
The major learning I had in this phase of the project was how many of peers were highly unsatisfied with the WebTycho platform so much so that a number requested to move to another Learning Management System. I have been using WebTycho now for a few years and have found it adequate, however clearly based on the reaction WebTycho is starting to get bypassed by higher capability platforms which should be a concern for UMUC.
In the readings I especially liked Bates & Poole (2003) discussion of the neats and scruffies, as it reminded me that I started this course as a scruff and through the learning in this course I am moving in the direction of a neat. This being reinforced by Moore & Kearsley, (2005) who maintain that essential features of the planning process are to have clear goals and objectives, good structure, small manageable units, and repetition, feedback and evaluation Another key point from Moore & Kearsley (2005) was that “teaching effectiveness is also greatly enhanced through the organization and presentation of the course material…….the most important considerations are readability, usability and information complexity” (p. 116). These points reinforced the practical experience in the prototype course project.
Class Discussions
Overall I found the class discussion disappointing; largely due to the fact there was little guidance to the critical topic matters that should be discussed. Maybe it is due to the fact that I have been largely educated under the direct instructional style, I find a general conference that invites students to simply talk about the readings, too broad, and students including myself just post a few points in an article they are reading without any deep thought into the relevance of the subject matter. The conferences where specific questions were posted by the faculty member created a more comprehensive discussion and deeper group learning.
Required Reading
The course textbook, Morrison et al. (2007) is excellent, I know I will be using it as a reference for many years to come. In addition, the supplemental readings were useful and relevant and helped to build my knowledge in online teaching and learning. My critique is that the volume was overwhelming in some weeks, causing me to skim some of the chapters and articles. While I have every intention of going back and reading some of the areas in more detail, it would be helpful especially in shortened summer courses to give a more focused guidelines to the readings to ensure we cover the critical elements. My feeling of being overwhelmed may have been also due to the additional extensive research and readings into my learning topic.
Conclusion
A great benefit of writing a reflective paper is that it requires one to “reflect”. Overall I feel I have learnt a tremendous amount in this course, it has really helped me to think more deeply about the whole instructional design process. The practical ‘hands-on’ approach of taking us through the Instructional Design process in the assignments was extremely useful. While the course validated many of things I was doing, it highlighted the areas in which I need to focus, namely putting much more emphasis in the up-front analysis and course design. Although my choice of topic for the course development created a significant amount of work, I found was also quite beneficial in that it reinforced some of the concepts in this course and other MDE courses I have taken, and most importantly it has helped me in my teaching.
References
Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kalyuga, S., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2001). Learner experience and efficiency of instructional guidance. Educational Psychology, 21(1), 5-23.
Karagiorgi, & Symeou (2005). Translating Constructivism into Instructional Design: Potential and Limitations. Educational Technology and Society, 8(1), 17 - 27. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from Educational Technology and Society Web site: http://www.ifets.info/journals/8_1/5.pdf
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J. & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching, Educational Psychologist, 41 (2), 75-86 .
Lebow, (1994). Constructivist values for instructional systems design: Five principles toward a new mindset.Educational Technology Research and Development, 41(3), 4-16
Moore, M., & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance education: A systems view (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction (5th ed. ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Gaytan, J.,McEwen, B.C. (2007). Effective online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education. Vol. 21. no. 3, p117-132
Scott, P. A. (1996). Attributes of high-quality intensive course learning experiences: student voices and experiences. College Student Journal,30(1), 69-77.
Seamon, M. (2004, April). Short and long term differences in instructional effectiveness between intensive and semester length courses. Teachers College Record, 108(4), 852-874.
