I was not sure what to expect from this course. I was not really sure what instructional design was. One thought was that this course would be about developing instructional materials for the classroom – especially technology based materials as this course is part of the MET program. Another thought was that instructional design involved the creation of online courses for our school boards. This thought really grabbed my attention. It is my goal to become an assistant principal or technology supervisor in my next role for my school board so I thought this would be an excellent source of knowledge and give me the ability to be a strong asset and mentor to this type of instruction. Looking back, I guess I was partially correct on both accounts but there was so much more. I design instruction for my classrooms daily but have not thought about all that goes into solid instruction, especially outside the classroom. Needs assessments, learning analysis, learner characteristics, different contexts, different learning strategies, different types of technologies and the continuous evaluation of my materials and teaching techniques were things I really did not think about in the development of instruction. They are all so important.
I learned so much from this course. I can not believe that so much goes into developing good instruction. As I have stated earlier in this paper, my professional focus it to move up the administrative ladder in our school board as either as an assistant principal or a technology supervisor. This course will give me many opportunities to move up into either field. Educational Technology 503 has given me the knowledge and confidence to be a significant mentor in our school board, it will allow me to help my colleagues in their course design whether it is in the traditional classroom setting, an online setting or a combination of both (blended) and it will allow me to become part of our distance education field – CBE Learn. If I decide to stay in the classroom, the concepts learned from this course can only help in my current teaching abilities and make me become a much better teacher. Another possibility on the horizon is to move into the Instructional Design field and design instruction in the oil and gas industry.
I found the reading from Larson and Lockee’s Streamlined ID: A Practical Guide to Instructional Design a very difficult read. There was so much unfamiliar information that at times I had to read paragraphs over two or three times. It did get easier toward the end as I became more familiar with ID.
The course was set up in a way that there was a lot of collaboration between colleagues. Most of the evaluation from my final project was from these colleagues. This was fine except there were times I did not know if I was on the right track. I thank each of my classmates for all of the constructive feedback. It was nice to be in a course with such a collaborative focus.
Throughout the course there were five discussions and a final ID project. Each of these helped in the understanding of the course material. The second topic I was part of a lead group that made a Google Slides presentation. Within the evaluation of the final ID project, there was a peer evaluation and a PowerPoint project.
These are listed below:
I would like to thank my instructor Jennifer McGrath for all the prompt responses to my questions throughout the course. I appreciate all of the help.
