Over the past six weeks I have had the opportunity to
research many interesting topics with respect to distance education. Initially, I thought that my blog would focus
on issues involving distance education.
I know this is a broad area, but I felt that there was a lot for me to
learn and, to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to end up.
Six weeks on, I have been introduced to the Open Learning
concept and introduced to principles of
instructional design. These are two
areas that are of great interest to me.
Is there any way that I could combine these topics into a
single blog post?
After reading about the roles and issues surrounding
instructional designers I started to think about what goes into making an open
course. These don’t just happen: they require the talents of instructors,
instructional designers, subject experts, and often the learners
themselves. So – if these courses are
popping up, who is making them? What are
the guidelines? Just because they are
free or open that does not mean that they are of lower quality.
What I found was a handbook for authors and instructional
designers of open and distance learning courses put together by the
Commonwealth of Learning, an organization set up by the Commonwealth
governments in order to improve quality of education and make education more
accessible to members of their countries.
The Commonwealth of Learning is based in Vancouver. It seemed like perfect timing to discover
this document because it ties together a lot of the things I have learned over
the last 6 weeks doing research for my blog, as well as in my course work.
The document is titled “Creating Learning Materials for Open
and Distance Learning: A Handbook for Authors and Instructional
Designers”. This document is full of
interesting information for instructional designers but what really was
interesting for me was its focus on designing an open course.
Check it out here:
http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/odlinstdesignHB.pdf
The comparison of ODL (open and distance learning) materials
to textbooks was very interesting. A typical ODL module allows for interactive
activities and immediate feedback, compared to a textbook which is for the most
part solely photos and text. It seems to
make sense that the ODL methods allow for more interactivity, yet, in our
classrooms we spend hundreds on textbooks.
The manual also gives scenarios of when it would be best to develop your
own materials from scratch, or when to adapt new ones. Tips are given how to plan an ODL course, context
issues involved, how to order and pace content, as well as how to use text,
photos, and illustrations. There is a
wealth of information here and as a new comer to instructional design, it was
all very interesting to me.
Reading this document caused me to think about designing
especially for adult learners. Over my 16
years as a teacher, I think I would have a handle on designing a quality
program for high school students.
Adults, however, have different needs and have different experiences and
this document addressed some of them.
With open access becoming more and more popular, there is a possibility
that one day I could be designing such a course and as a result must be aware
of these issues. This document helped cement the idea to me that instructional
design does not rely solely on one set of approaches (behavioural, cognitive,
or constructivist) but on combinations of all of them to best meet the needs of
learners in an online distance course, whether it be an open course or not.
I realize that every course has it’s own instructional
design issues or specifications, but, as a new-comer to the field this document
gave me some serious food for thought and look forward to studying about
instructional design in more depth over the course of my studies.
Special thanks to The Commonwealth of Learning for allowing
this document to be available openly and freely.
Organization:
www.col.org
Nice way to wrap the course part of your blog -- but of course I hope you keep going with this!
ReplyDeleteI think the best kind of blog experience (and many others, for that matter) are when we have a general idea of what we are doing, but then it comes into clear focus through the act of creating it. That's what you say happened with your blog, and I think that's terrific.
Instructional design has undergone a lot of changes in recent years -- a virtual tide change. At one point it was seen as a very prescriptive, very organized set of activities that resulted in predictable outcomes. Not any more (even though there are still a lot of instructional designers out there who were trained that way -- so hold onto these ideas tenaciously). Now, instructional design is viewed as a design discipline, and so it looks much more like what an architect or city planner or garden designer might do. Part science, part artistry, part pragmatism. And always sensitive to the fact that how you approach a design depends on a whole host of factors, not just marching through a model and checking off a list of processes from beginning to end. You create processes that can respond to unique circumstances and contexts, and you enjoy both the excitement and the humility that comes with doing something in a designerly way.
So glad to hear you've been bitten by the ID bug. I love the area, and always find it fresh, even after all these years of doing it.