Skip to main content

Week 1 - Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2

Hi, Everyone!

My name is Carmina and this... is my first blog for course CECS 5211.  This week I got introduced to the Canvas LMS, this is my first time in this learning environment.  I have to admit that is taking me a little while to get used to this new LMS.  I am so used to the Blackboard environment since I have been using it for 15 years.  I find the Canvas design to be clean but at the same time clutter, particular in how discussion board posts are displayed.  But I can already see some features that are well designed and that I wish Blackboard would follow.

This week we did a short video introduction or ourselves.  Just like most people, I dislike hearing the sound of my voice.  I also notice I get fidgety when talking about myself on video.  I much rather talk about technical instructions.  But regardless of whether we like to hear ourselves or not, in this career, you have to do a lot of video recordings, so we might as well get used to it!

For week one, we read chapters one and two of Rapid Instructional Design.  It seems like the book is tailored more towards corporate training although it does go over basic design principles.  According to the author, the most basic definition of instructional design is “a set of rules or procedures for creating training” (Piskurich, 2000, p. 3).  The author suggests that instructional design should be looked at more like a system that allows designers to ask the right questions which will then lead to producing the right content/product.

There are many models for creating instructional design training but they all use the same basic principles.  These basic principles were interestingly enough created by the military in the 1940s.  Instructional Systems Design (ISD) is a straight-line model with five different phases:  analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.  Some important terms covered in chapter one includes the term 'facilitator,' the person whose main role is to assist in helping others learn.  The facilitator doesn’t need to be a content expert.  The designer is the person putting the training together for the instructor, and the subject-matter expert (SME) is the person who knows the content well.

In chapter two, we move on to the pre-design phase, needs analysis and needs assessment.  Here is where the designer determines what training is or is not needed.  The author mentions never to ask the question “what training needs do you have?” because the question is too limited.  A better question would be “What does your organization need?”  All of this information will eventually lead us into becoming a better instructional designer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reflection on Week 2 and 3

Week 2 In week 2, my group and I worked on the analysis design document.  The way we split the work was for all four members to place their name in the areas they wished to work on.  For our group this worked very well however, I can’t help but feel that my writing skills are not as advanced as the other members of my group.  I had continuously look at an example of Blooms Taxonomy to complete this assignment.  We also met with our client (online) and our meeting was very productive as it cleared some misunderstandings.  For example, we had originally believed that our target audience was going to be the Houston University Downtown students but as it turns out our target audience will be faculty, staff, and volunteers acting as mentors to minority students.  We were also able to pinpoint exactly what the project’s name needs to be as well as identifying some of the learning modules.  Week 3 For week 3, we read ...

Week 8 Blog - Learning Styles and Group Project

Complete a blog entry about what you have learned since your last blog post. Be sure to include your results from the “What is your Learning Style” quiz. Do you think this assessment gives an accurate view of your learning style? My Learning Style According to the learning style quiz, I am not very good at anything in specific.  I have always said that the person I know the least about is myself.  I have always felt such disconnect with my own persona and this makes it difficult for me to know whether if I am being truthful in quizzes like this.  I am linguistic only 33%, logical-mathematical 38%, visual-spatial 42%, intrapersonal 50%, interpersonal 56%, musical 31% (funny because I don’t know anything about music), bodily-kinesthetic 17%, and naturalistic 50%.  I’m just all over the place.  I would say my learning style is a combination of visual and auditory.  Visual learners like to take notes of lecture and hear oral directions....

Week 14 - Final Blog, We Made it to the End!

It has been almost two months since the last time I wrote a blog for this class and so many things have transpired since then.  Our group project is just about finished, we are only waiting on our client’s notes so that we can do final revisions.  We had our group presentation last Thursday and there were so many great presentations.  The only negative thing I have to say about it is that the group presentations went over the 15-minute maximum time.  We were told to keep our presentation to 15 minutes and since we were four people in our team, my part of the presentation was limited to three minutes.  Although I went by the time restrictions, watching other speak for long periods of time made me feel guilty for not having presented longer. So what have I learned since my last blog post?  I have learned that group projects can wear me down a bit.  I felt that this project went on for way too long.  Part of the problem is that we were working w...