What is Instructional
Design?
As a teacher you
are already a practicing instructional designer. You develop curricula,
plan your lessons, develop assessment and evaluate how you can improve
your teaching from semester to semester, all of which are part of the ID
process. As a discrete discipline instructional design differs from what
you do only in that it is an organized field of knowledge that
specifically refers to the intentional use of various technologies and
takes advantage of specific theories of instruction and the mind. By
introducing you to some of the theory and practice of instructional
design we hope you can find some tools to enhance your practice as a
teacher, especially as it relates to the implementation of technology.
Knowledge of
instructional design is particularly important as you evaluate new
technologies for teaching and learning, especially when you decide that
you would like to develop your own multimedia materials or work with the
asynchronous technologies of on-line learning. Instructional design can
help you be a more effective teacher on-line or off and help you
understand certain problems that you will encounter when using any
medium as an instructional tool.
Modern
instructional design dates back to the latter part of the 19th
century and the early part of the 20th century when
psychology began to separate from philosophy as a discipline and take on
the characteristics of an independent science. One of these pioneers in
psychology, B.F. Skinner, determined that instruction could be more
effective if it were based on scientific principles. He proposed that it
could be designed and tested for effectiveness in meeting learning
objectives.
The ideas put
forth by Skinner and others have changed over the years, especially as
more effective theories of the mind have come forth, but there are
certain core practices of instructional design that have remained fairly
consistent. The process can generally be broken down into four parts:
1)
Determine your goals for the instruction
2)
Develop a strategy to meet these goals
3)
Evaluate how well your strategy worked
4)
Based on your evaluation, improve your design.
If you notice
the instructional design process is circular. You use evaluation to go
back and reassess your goals and strategies. In an ideal environment you
are always improving your design.
What are Goals?
In any given
discipline there are things that one needs to learn as one goes from a
novice to an expert. As an expert you know what is important to
understanding how to solve a given problem, understand a topic or
demonstrate proficiency in your area of expertise. As an instructor you
can identify what you expect a student to know at the end of a given
course. These are the basis for your goals. Instructional design starts
with identifying these goals for a given unit of instruction.
Identifying
goals is something only you, as a disciplinary expert, can do. What do
you expect students to know about your field of expertise? What
knowledge and skill do you think is important for them to know if they
are to be well educated in your discipline? What knowledge do you hold
to be required of an expert? Instructional design starts with you
articulating this at the very start of the process.
In your design
process placing your expectations at the start of the process is very
important because it determines everything else that comes afterwards.
While we might use similar techniques across disciplines and courses
they only make sense if we know our goals in advance. No technology or
medium is inherently capable of being a tool for instruction any more
than a hammer is capable of hitting a nail by itself.
A key part of
any design strategy is to think about specific knowledge, skills and
performances you expect students to know and to put them in explicit
terms that are detailed and specific. Some of us can express larger
goals quite well, but we often have a hard time identifying the specific
things that we expect a student to accomplish. You have to be as
detailed as possible.
A good tool to
help you identify your goals is a rubric. It is a simple means to chart
your expectations, and as you will see it will prove to be useful
throughout the design process. It is not just a design tool, but also
identifies what you need to include in the assessment process.
Students tend to
perform better when they know what is expected of them and have an idea
of what the standard are, but you will also teach better once you’ve
clearly articulated for yourself what exactly you’d like to see at the
end of your semester. Rubrics also have a powerful role to play in your
academic discipline as they can be shared with your colleagues to see if
you have similar goals and expectations for the students in your
discipline. Rubrics are a central part of helping your students
understand by design, but they are also helpful in creating an academic
culture of shared expectations.
What are
Strategies?
Strategies for
instructional design generally involve a choice of techniques, media and
organization grounded in a theory of instruction. Many strategies
familiar to you might be those grounded in a theory called Behaviorism,
but current instructional design practice generally looks to the
theories such as Constructivism as a basis for design. It places the
emphasis on active learning by the student and calls for authentic and
performance-based assessment.
Constructivism
starts with a very basic idea. We construct our own knowledge in an
active and engaged manner throughout our lives and each person has a
personal role in the process of their own learning in a social context.
With this emphasis on the individual learner in society Constructivism
recognizes that everyone has a different approach to the world. It
encourages us as designers to use a number of different perspectives and
techniques to present knowledge and to embrace problems and complexity.
It is also concerned with questions such as the transferability of
knowledge and the need to put learning in a context where students take
an active role in their own education. For you as a designer it means
re-evaluating current strategies for instruction, such as how you
present information, place it in context and take into account what the
learners see from their multiple perspectives. For more information on
the theories that make up Constructivism and that will support your
strategies you can look at our theories page.
Strategies
themselves can be fairly diverse. In many discussions on instructional
design strategies are centered on questions of technology or media use,
but keep in mind that the definition you use for this can be very broad.
Some strategies
can be relatively conventional and self-limiting. For example, you might
have determined that for a course in the sciences, such as physics, a
specific lesson on the principles of Newton’s Laws require a digital
video or an interactive graphical display to make them more
understandable. You might not want to do much more than that and
maintain a lecture format for most of your instruction. Conversely, you
might want to do a more dramatic change, taking Newton’s Laws and
situating them in an actual setting where students have to work on a
group project that puts the scientific principles into a realistic
setting, such as simulating how the laws are applied by scientists and
engineers in the real world and situating the learning in an authentic
context. You could, for example, create a situation where students have
to explore how the use of seatbelts for automobile safety is of itself
an application of Newton’s conception of inertia using a simulation of
automobile design. In the humanities you could explore history as an
actual historian would use primary sources and the like by introducing
digital representations in various media that simulate what an actual
historian using primary sources would do. Your strategy can be as broad
or as precise as you want it to be, but you should start with a theory
of instruction. The criteria are how it improves your meeting your
goals. To do this you need a method to evaluate your design.
How Do You Evaluate
Your Design?
Any evaluation
is based on the idea that if you put in place the right strategy you
will see students meet the initial goals you set out at the very start
of the process. Often we see evaluation in schools as being of the
student, but in instructional design we see student outcomes as being a
means to critique our methods as well. For example, if we find that
students aren’t mastering a certain topic we examine how we can improve
our design so they will. Evaluation isn’t just about how the student
performs; it is also about how good the design is at meeting our goals.
Current
evaluation measures use the various ideas that have arisen from
Constructivism to look for more authentic ways for students to present
what they have learned for you to assess and measure. There is a
tendency to downplay such classical Behaviorist assessment strategies
such as short answer, multiple choice and true/false tests in favor of
portfolios, multimedia presentations and the assignment of authentic
tasks in a simulated environment.
Your evaluation
of your design can be based on the same tool you use to assess student
performance. You are, after all, measuring how successful your design
was in achieving your instructional goal of having a student competently
understand a given curriculum and be able to demonstrate a given level
of expertise.
When you
evaluate your students you are doing so within the context of your goals
and your strategy. You will be able to identify what needs to be
improved by seeing what goals were not met or those that were met
inadequately. You will also see where certain misconceptions have been
made in the course of their learning process and address that in your
design.
Using
Multimedia
Most of us grew
up in a world where instruction was generally delivered by a lecture and
a textbook. Perhaps a workbook based on behaviorist principles was used
as well. When another medium was used it was generally strictly under
the control of the instructor, such as a filmstrip or a video. Today,
with multimedia technology we can make the classroom a far more
interesting place.
With multimedia
you can liven up your instruction with student-centered techniques that
take full advantage of modern technology. Students can use tools such as
digital cameras, scanners, video cameras, audio recorders and
presentation tools such as PowerPoint to create portfolios,
presentations and websites that can tools for collaboration and
authentic assessment.
Digital Photos
Inexpensive digital cameras have a great deal of value as a tool for
education. You can use them to document your classroom activities and
events or use as an icebreaker for class introductions and the like.
They can also be powerful tools to collect data in visual form. When you
look at how visual information is used in so many diverse disciplines
such as anthropology, journalism and engineering you can see how you can
develop a means to introduce low-cost digital photography in your class
as well. You’ll find that digital cameras have many more applications
than you’ve imagined once you start using them.
Scanners
Scanners allow you to take images or text and put them in digital form
so you can manipulate, store and distribute them using a computer. You
can scan in text using OCR software that will allow you to save it for
use in a word processor and images can be saved for editing in graphics
software.
A scanner allows you to use the power of digital technology to share
physical artifacts such as images and text that currently are only
available in a fixed form such as a book or print. You’ll find this is
particularly useful in sharing materials with students that might
normally not be available to them. Students can use scanners themselves
to include various sources in their presentations as well.
Digital Audio
Audio is one of the things that people tend not to think about when they
first use multimedia, but you should consider it as one of the best
tools available to you. With simple audio recording equipment you can
record a narration for a presentation that you can make available
on-line. You can also introduce methodologies such as the oral history
to your classes or creative uses such as student performances of poetry
and the like. It can also be a useful tool for taking notes in the field
and recording debates and interactions that take place in the lab or
classroom. Audio can also be a great tool to introduce multiple
perspectives and counter-narratives to a given course of investigation.
Digital Video
Digital video is a technology that
allows you to shoot, edit and distribute audiovisual materials. While
the digital camcorder is perhaps familiar to you it is not the end point
of digital video, just the start. Editing digital video, a task more
often than not done on a computer, allows you to take the raw materials
that you’ve shot and gathered by other means and give them meaning
through montage and add graphics, sounds and effects. Editing isn’t just
taking out the materials you don’t want; it is also about combining and
contrasting audiovisual materials to enhance their effectiveness and
meaning.
One of the more exciting aspects of
digital video is the flexibility in distribution. While shooting with a
digital camcorder is very similar to shooting with an analog one digital
video as a means for distribution allows for far more flexibility and
broader use than earlier analog methods. Digital video can be put on a
server to be distributed via the Internet, burned onto a CD or DVD, used
as an element in PowerPoint and can even now be delivered to a cell
phone. It can even be delivered live for remote monitoring, such as is
the case with a web cam or a teleconference. Digital video can be an
excellent tool for nearly every discipline.
Presentation Tools
Most of us are familiar with
presentation tools such as PowerPoint, but we often aren’t aware of the
full capabilities of this particular tool as well as related tools that
can also be quite effective.
PowerPoint can be extended to include
image files, graphics, video and audio clips. It can also be made into a
stand-alone application that can be distributed for people to use
outside of a class or lecture. With Impatica you can put your PowerPoint
presentations on the Internet and make them small enough to be shared
easily with your students even if they are using a dial-up connection.
Presentation tools are particularly
effective if you allow students to use them to build project
presentations, portfolios and the like. One of the particularly powerful
features of presentation tools is that they can serve as the “envelope”
for other digital media.
