Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Effective Web Instruction

Frick and Boling (2011) claim that the first step for developing instructional goals is to meet with the stakeholders. Before you can meet with the stakeholders, they must be defined. All stakeholders provide a unique view of the instructional goals. Obscure stakeholders may be just as important as those that are prominent in the process. However, in the end, the designer and your immediate supervisor need to be confident and satisfied.

Once the designer begins actually forming the instructional goals, indicators must be established. Indicators should be measurable and well defined. The learner analysis is an important part of the design process. The question Frick & Boling pose is, "What are relevant characteristics of students that will help determine what instruction may be needed in order to reach the goals?" By completing a learner analysis, the designer will learn what additional instruction may be needed in order for all learners to achieve the desired goal. Context analysis is assessing the instructional environment and determining if any factors should be modified.

Thoughts
This handbook is written in a very helpful way. The terminology and approach to the handbook is helpful for a designer working through the instructional design process. It allows the learner and context analysis to be put into a real-world situation. The way the stakeholders were identified was a very important aspect that is frequently overlooked when creating instructional objectives. (Note: instructional goals = objectives & indicators = behaviors). I look forward to the completion of this handbook. I think it will be beneficial in the way the processes I have come to learn through my classes are combined with real world situations.

Resources
Frick & Boling (2011). Effective web instruction: Handbook for an inquiry-based process. Indiana University.

1 comment:

  1. Agree with the 'real-world' point. After needs assessment and the identification of goals, we go further to objectives, performance and so on; and to look at the learners themselves, the context where learning takes place and learners will apply their newly acquired skills by conducting analysis, like learner characteristics, contextual characteristics which can be a classroom setting, a work setting, or the real world!

    Yi

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