Elements of Instructional Design

Instructional design can be defined as “the analysis of learning and performance problems, and the design, development, implementation, evaluation, and management of instructional and non-instructional processes and resources intended to improve learning and performance in a variety of settings, particularly education institutions and the workplace.  Professional in the field instructional design and technology often use systematic instructional design procedures and employ instructional media to accomplish their goals” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018, p.  5).  Throughout this course, I have learned about how much planning needs to be done in order to make a learning course effective.  Many times learning opportunities such as conferences or workshops are developed as a “sit and get” session. We all have attended our share of these sessions.  When a presenter is able to grab and hold the learner's attention, the learning curve usually goes up.  Unfortunately, there are classrooms with the same type of learning environments.

One factor of instructional design I recently learned about is how important the planning stages are. The most common model used for planning is SAM (Successive Approximation Model).  Through this process, the presented “repeated attempts to achieve closer proximity to perfection (without expecting to achieve it) ( Reiser & Dempsey, 2018, p. 43).  Other key factors of the instructional design include creating active authentic learning, motivation and using media wisely.  When all of these factors are fully developed, professional training or class instruction becomes engaging and memorable.

During this school year, I will have the opportunity to provide monthly training for the teachers at my school.  I plan to incorporate active and engaging activities in each of these sessions to help teachers remember what was presented at the sessions.  They will be held after school which is always a low time of the day for teachers.  Hopefully, with the change in how I plan/organize these sessions, they will gain more knowledge on how they can turn around and use it in their classroom as well.

For my training, our school system will be hosting a Digital Citizenship week.  To kick off the week, I will present to the teachers of my school, the importance of digital citizenship, statistics about online use and how we can better educate our students to be safe.  Throughout this course, I hope teachers gain an understanding of how important digital/online safety is and how to prepare lessons to relay the importance.  We will participate in an activity where the teachers will Google themselves and share the results on a Padlet.  We will also view several videos regarding the importance of digital footprints. The teachers will look at how they can encourage students to create positive digital tattoos.  The resources provided will help teachers as they plan lessons to share with their students.  I will also offer my assistance in helping to prepare these lessons.

Overall, I think the teachers will be responsive to this training.  The information is pertinent and the activities are engaging.  I wanted to incorporate as many hands on activities as possible in my training. From my experience, when I am engaged in a training, I tend to remember the content presented on a much deeper level.  Feel free to take a look at my training as I have posted a link and brief introduction to my blog.  If you have any suggestions on how to improve the presentation, please make comments on the blog post.

References:
Reiser, R.A. & Dempsey, J.V. (2018). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology. New York: Pearson.

UBC Digital Tattoo: If we looked you up online, what would we learn about you? [Video file]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/T3awgYhZjdQ