Instructional Design

Reflection

Instructional Design provides the building blocks to creating an online course. The course added to my base of knowledge in objectives, supports for students, chunking, and universal design that I first learned of in my previous courses in the program. The emphasis on student centeredness provided a welcomed reminder of whom I need to design a course – my audience (students) and not me. The two elements in the course that I found the most growth professionally were in alignment and activities types. These two provided the epiphany in regards to objectives and how best to develop them that I needed. My confidence in future instructional design projects is much stronger because of this course.

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The alignment chart we created at the beginning of the course answered all the nagging questions I still had from the previous course in the program Assessment in E-Learning. Developing the learning objectives had been my greatest challenge in that class. The alignment chart helped me to structure the course around a Module theme or Topic with both Terminal and Enabling Objectives that were clearly defined by the instructor. The layout of the chart also provided a strong visual component to bring all the information together. Including the Assessment Idea and the Absorb-Do-Connect Activities provided that holistic approach that I needed to see how the puzzle fit together as a whole.

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The Absorb-Do-Connect Activities that were developed by Horton were the highlight of the course. Where have these been all my teaching career? As a writing instructor, my students have had two activities: to read and to write. Horton’s ideas opened up my mind to explore other ways besides reading that students can absorb information. I will add OERs to my courses in the future for just this reason. While I still have some difficulty discerning between Do and Connect activities, I am more confident that I can provide students meaningful activities that enhance their writing without them just writing.

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Instructional Design is the final course before the Practicum for me in the Graduate Certificate Program. I found the content presented in a variety of ways that enhanced engagement. The assignments were based on real world application. By emphasizing design over development, I was able to absorb the theories and best practices behind the process instead of trying to do this while also learning new web tools to develop the design. I would be very interested in revisiting this course as an intern.