This Week's
Hot Topic

Instructional Design

An instructional designer is someone that designs and develops instruction based on theories and practice.  Instructional Designers are employed in business and industry, the military, health and human services, public schools, and higher education. Instructional designers design web-based instruction, multimedia instruction, stand-up training sessions and workshops, and more.   Designers follow models, such as the ADDIE model to assist in the process of designing sound instruction.

Designers pay close attention to what should be taught, what goals are trying to be achieved, and how to teach the materials in a way that is motivating and is appropriate for the given target group of learners.  Designers pay close attention to how learners are assessed as well!  Alignment is a critical element of the design process.  Alignment is when the goals and objectives for instruction match the activities and tasks that learners are involved in during learning; and then these activities and tasks match the assessment the learners are given at the end of the instruction! 

I am guessing that almost all of you have had some learning experience (classroom, tutorial, workshop, seminar, etc) where what you thought you were supposed to learn (the objectives) was not what was really taught at all (tasks/activities) and to top it off the test (assessment) you were given seemed to have nothing to do with what you were actually taught!  Can you remember how frustrating it was?  If you can remember such an experience, or you can imagine how frustrating it would be, you can begin to understand the importance of the role of an instructional designer in the creation of instruction of all types.

Instructional Systems Design (ISD) has been widely recognized as a field that will solve performance and learning problems by analyzing the tasks to be learned, developing measurable goals and objectives, developing assessments that are aligned to the instructional goals and objectives, designing high-quality instruction by making the most of the mediums of delivery available, and evaluating results and making changes based on evaluation findings. In a nutshell, instructional designers possess a wide range of skills that can be applied in education and training situations. I have found over the years that my skills are used on a daily basis.

I can also imagine that many of you possess these skills and apply them at varying degrees in your daily life.  All of you who are K-12 teachers, teacher trainers, military instructors, or in some other work setting where you are involved in teaching people, use some level of instructional design skills on a regular basis.  You may not call what you do instructional design but after this week I hope you will see that instructional design covers a wide variety of activities. 

For example, teachers call what they do lesson planning instead of instructional design.  Lesson planning is a part of what instructional designers do but it also encompasses a lot more.  Fortunately, teachers do not always have to do everything encompassed in the instructional design process because curriculum designers have done some of the work for them.  Curriculum designers and developers have developed objectives, materials, activities, and assessments, along with teacher manuals for different groups of learners (K, 1, 2...12) and different subjects (reading, English, biology, etc.) so that teachers can use the curriculum and focus on adapting it to their specific learners' needs, provide feedback to students, and other necessary tasks.  More recently, there has been a focus on providing instructional materials online for students and teachers.  Instructional designers also play a role here.  So, as you can see instructional designers are everywhere!

You have probably heard the old adage, "If you don't know where you are going, anywhere will do!" OR "If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else!" Instructional Designers take knowing where to go very seriously.  Many of you may have taken the Instructional Design course or the Curriculum Design course. You can learn to use a software program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage or Toolbook or HyperStudio BUT if you do not follow sound principles of designing instruction while using these tools then your product is likely not to meet the criteria of being effective, efficient, and appealing.

Given some of your posts to the listserv about the good and bad tutorials many of you experienced this past week, I bet all of you have now probably been to a web site tutorial that did not meet this criteria (they are everywhere).  The person that built it may have known how to build a web page but they were not well versed in ID.  The overview provided here is for everyone to get a handle on what instructional design is and how it fits into the field of Instructional Technology. To become more knowledgeable of ID, you should take an ID course.

In theory, instructional design sounds extremely logical.  Just so you know, the process of instructional design has a lot of "behind the scenes" work.  What you won't see when you review well-designed products (online tutorials, training manuals, K-12 curriculum, multimedia instruction, etc.)  is all of the work in identifying tasks, analyzing the learning environment, considering learner characteristics, seeing the curriculum design charts, the test blueprints, or the alignment charts.  What you will see is instruction that students within an identified target audience can learn from!  Real designers use formative and summative evaluation to ensure that the instruction is effective, efficient, and appealing. Not only do they want to ensure learners learn, they also want to make sure they enjoy learning (are motivated) and that it is done in an efficient manner (it does not take an unrealistic amount of time or an unrealistic set of resources).

Some of our future hot topics this semester will focus on different tools/products/projects in which instructional design plays an important role.  As you look into these topics I think you will begin to see why instructional design is one of the hot topics in IT!

Someone says, "I'm an instructional designer," and you say, "Huh?" Well, no more.  To get a handle on the basics of ID, go through the following materials and then check your comprehension by taking the short quiz I have developed for you.  You will need to log in to the elearning system to take your quiz.  Before you take the quiz be sure you have a grasp of the following objectives (notice the term objectives here - thus, BIG HINT: these will be what are assessed on the quiz):

• be able to state what the acronym ISD stands for
• be able to state what the acronym SAT stands for
• be able to state what the acronym ADDIE stands for, describe the ADDIE model, and explain each phase of the ADDIE model and the tasks instructional designers perform within each phase
• be able to distinguish between instructional design and instructional development
• be able to distinguish between instructional design and instructional technology
• be able to distinguish between formative and summative evaluation
• discuss the importance of alignment of instructional outcomes, learning tasks, and learner assessments
• identify important learner characteristics to consider when designing instruction
• identify the appropriate sequencing and recurrence of various steps in the instructional design process

ID Basic Sites:

• Definitions of Instructional Design
• Big Dog's ISD Page - Read Chapter 1 (read others if you have time)
• Introduction to Instructional Design and the ADDIE Model
• Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction: An Introduction (other articles at http://www.e-learningguru.com/knowledge_instrctionalD.htm)
• ISD Methodologies and Techniques - Introduction

Drill

Take the ID Quiz in the elearning system - read the quizzes help sheet first. You will have 120 minutes to complete this quiz.

One important aspect that we will focus on throughout this course is instructional technology from the perspective of educational administrators. All of you are in this course because you are in the educational leadership program, and, I presume, plan to take on a leadership position of some sort in your current or other school. There are actually national technology standards that have been developed for adminstrators as well as for teachers and for students. Each focuses on appropriate applications given the edn user they are focusing on. In addition to these some states, including Florida, have developed specific technology standards or requirements that must be met within a degree program and on which future adminsitrators much demonstrate competency. Several of the projects in this course will focus on you developing these competencies. For a look at the different standards I am referring to, use the links below:

• National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students (Find out what your school is responsible for making sure your students can know and be able to do in relation to technology)
• National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Teachers (Find out what you -if you are a teacher- and other teachers are expected to know and be able to do upon entering the classroom to teach)
• National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Administrators (Find out what you are responsible for being able to do as a school administrator - Note that these are slotted to be updated this coming year)
• National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Technology Leaders (Find out what they want you to know to be a technology leader in your school)
• Florida Principal Leadership Standards and Key Indicators (focus on Technology)

So...what do you think? Where do you fall on these standards? You way out ahead of the pack? Way behind? Somewhere in between? Where are your strengths and weaknesses?

Some Florida specific resources that can get you moving in the right direction are as follows:

• A module on Technology in Educational Administration by Florida School Leaders network
• Florida Innovates -provides you with school data on technology uses as well as tools you can use to assess technology resources in your school.
• Florida Leader.Net provides you with a link to TAGLIT and other data collection methods/tools for assessing technology use as well as other online training for technology and how to integrate it into your school improvement planning and processes

Last week all crew members should have looked at a variety of Technology News sites as well as additional ways to identify tutorials to keep yourself up to date. A key aspect of technology leadership specific to K-12 administrators is technology planning and its role in the school improvement planning and processes. Florida as well as other states require school improvement plans as well as technology plans. IN some districts these two are well integrated, in other districts they are separate entities entirely.

This week our text readings as well as the project I will be assigning will provide you with an overview of the basic of technology planning and other key elements that will allow you to assess where your school is in terms of the technology planning process, technology integration right now, and where you need to be heading in the near future. This analysis and report assignment is something you will work on for the next 4 weeks. It is not due until week 7 so do not panic and think it all has to be accomplished this week.

Drill

• Read chapter 1-2 and 4-5 in your Picciano Text
• Download and review the School Technology Plan Analysis and Report assignment that you will begin working on this week and will continue to work on over the next 4 weeks
• Identify the school that will serve as your focus for this report (it should be your own or one you have been assigned for field experience)
• Identify any tools, resources and people you may need to utilize to complete your report and commence your work
• Ask any questions you have about the assignment via email
• Review the rubric that will be used to evaluate your report

As we begin to embark on a variety of tasks this semester that will involve downloading files, saving files, uploading files, etc., I would like to take this week to focus on an often overlooked yet basic set of knowledge becoming more and more important in the world of the Internet, online learning, and creating web pages...FILE FORMATS (and their extensions).  Some of you may be very well versed in this topic and so you can jump right to the quiz, but others are just starting out and trying to figure out what all the file extensions mean when they try to download programs, send attachments, or design web pages.  This drill is for YOU and to give you time to get a grip on all the extensions you are going to hear and see throughout this course.  Do not overlook the importance of this knowledge.  It will become more and more important as we begin to work with graphics and graphics programs and begin building web pages.

As you begin to download files you may likely run into files that are compressed (compacted to save disk space and download time) and that must be decompressed before you can open or use them.  Therefore, you are also going to learn a bit about compression and decompression so that you will be ready to handle this when the time arrives.

The following tutorials/informational sites should help you in your quest to learn all about file compression, formats, and extensions.  Some of the information is repetitive across sites but you may like one presentation style better than the others.

Before you take the quiz be sure you have a grasp of the following objectives (note objectives again linked to assessment):

• be able to categorize extensions used for ASCII text, formatted text, audio, graphic, and video files
• discuss use of compression for files, common file extensions for compressed files, and the distinguish between loss less and lossy compression of image files
• recognize characteristics of self-extracting files
• distinguish between colors used on Mac and on Windows
• identify what RTF, JPG, MPEG, GIF, BMP, HTML, PICT and DOC extensions stand for
• discuss what platform-independent file extensions are
• distinguish among bitmap, raster, vector, and metafile formats

File Format Basics Sites:

• Learn the NET: File Compression
• Learn the NET: File Formats and Extensions
• Introduction to Computer Text File Formats
• Graphic File Formats at a Glance
• Common File Formats Table
• ZAP's Music on the Net Tutorial: Music File Formats
• Every File Format in the World?
• Raster Graphics

Bonus Tutorials:

• Learn the NET: Downloading Files (if downloading makes you nervous because you are afraid you will not find it once you have downloaded it try here for some pointers)
• Learn the NET: Under the Hood of the WWW (For newbies to the net - what you probably don't know about the WWW)

Drill

• Formats and Extensions: After reading over the different sites above or using your own resources, take the File Format Quiz in the elearning system.  to show all you have learned - - read the quizzes help sheet first. You will have 90 minutes to complete this quiz.
• Compression: [NOTE: If you already have a program for compression and decompression then you do not need to do this exercise] Now that you know all about file compression and decompression and downloading, check to see if you have a decompression program to use when you begin downloading compressed files.  If you do not have a program such as WinZip or StuffItExpander then download it for use during this course. To find out more about WinZip check out this newbie site for info.
  • Go to the StuffItExpander (Windows and Mac users) site
  • Download the free expander by selecting the operating system on folder tab and following directions for the free expansion program
  • Install it

OR (you do not need both)

• Go to the WinZip (Windows users only) site
• Download the evaluation version (it comes in as a .exe file) by clicking on the WinZip link under the Downloads heading on the left.
• Install it

• FTP: Another program you will need when we begin working with web pages and graphics is one for file transfer protocol (FTP).  Very briefly, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is used to transfer programs or other information from one computer to another. This simple tool will let you do many things: download software, upload your own web pages, transfer information between your home and work machines, and more.  An FTP program will allow you to upload the web pages and graphics you build to the student web server.  For this course, SecureFTP (for Windows and Mac OSX users) or Fetch (for MacIntosh users)  is the program you will need.  First, check and see if you already have it on your computer.  If not, then installation and configuration instructions are available from the IT KnowledgeBase: http://portal.knowledgebase.net/article.asp?article=158178&p=6390.
  (Note: If you plan to install and use the FTP program on a work computer, you need to check with the system administrator to find out if there are any system-imposed restrictions or security settings that would prevent you from installing or using the program at work. Some network setups do not allow the use of FTP programs [especially at schools]. If you cannot use a computer at work for FTP, make sure you have access to another computer that you can use to complete this task and future FTP assignments.)

• Check the FAQ Page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Email Chief Curda.
• Email EMT Kelly.
• Email the firehouse crew and see if another firefighter knows the answer.

Now let's take a look at the Chief's
Inspection List for this week!