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.
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