I am so proud to be teaching such a wonderful group of students this semester. I appreciate their honesty in telling me they need help understanding the process.  Over all I am extremely proud of the work they are producing and I am looking forward to the rest of the semester teaching them. 

Our first project is working on a cube/packaging project.  It was the purpose of this project to teach the students a multitude of things.  They learn a combination of beginning typographic skills, illustrator skills, sketching, design principles, working with templates and they learn to print things that are going to be made 3D. They learn how to tests colors and how to work with patterns. 

I did not create this project, but the some of the students have mentioned to me that they wish the projects would be more exciting.  I am doing my best to make this as transferable as possible.  I have asked the students to be honest with me about how they feel the class is going.  They mentioned that they hope the projects get more exciting but that they are proud of their class and their instructor because they appreciate that they can come to me with their questions.   My students said they feel that way because they believe that I am honest with them. They like that I am real with them about why they are learning and the importance of understanding what the project is teaching them.  

Before the students told me this, I felt proud because I felt my students respected me.  What they told me last night concreted this.  It is my hope that I can continue to inspire them to ask questions and look for answers. 

The first project is due tomorrow.  It feels like christmas.  My first class, with my first projects to grade. The students may be feeling dread, but I am feeling ultimate excitement.  The other reason for my excitement is I will finally have student examples for my portfolio.  My entire class has given me permission to use the work they create in the classroom in my portfolio, which means I can finally start applying for jobs.  

I actually sent my first letter of interest to a position in London last week.  I have not heard back from the university yet.  The position I showed interest in would be for when their new Master's program begins.  Fingers crossed for me.  It would be amazing to teach abroad for a few years and to be involved in the creation of a new program. 

This blog post has gotten a little off track.  I wanted to mention I will be posting examples of my student's work on the blog post soon. I will also be adding images to the new section of my website directly created for student work. 

The images you see in the slide show above are of the students the first wall critique and their sketches on the wall.  The third image is from this week when I combined my studio with another instructor's studio while she was away.  It was empowering being in charge of a greater number of students. I love being here at Iowa State University.  I even felt a twinge of pain when I realized that I only have these students for so long and then they move on.  Then I remembered I get to start a new adventure next semester with a new set of students. There is something empowering about by not knowing what is happening after school. That knowing I have a huge adventure ahead of me.  Now I am off to start this fantastic journey of an amazing life. 

Currently working on a few readings for my Instructional Design course, and thought it would be interesting to write out my thoughts and to simplify what is being said in the readings.

Currently working on chapter 2 of "Designing Effective Instruction," by Morrison, Ross, Kalman and Kemp. This chapter is about Identifying the Need for Instruction.  The first step to any instructional design is to decide if instruction design is truly needed. The process of deciding if it is needed serves multiple purposes.  It identifies a need for a task and the critical needs.  It also sets priorities for the instruction, and a baseline to assess the effectiveness of the instructor design created.  At first, I assumed because of being the novice to some of the bigger parts of instruction design that I am, believed that many and if all things could be solved by some sort of method of instruction design.  The book explains that it may not be the people that need instructing but the method in which things are done that needs to change.  This makes sense to me and deep down I think I already knew this, but did not think of it in the same context of how the book explains it.

It is important to know whether instruction design is needed because if it is not needed, it can waste people’s valuable time and money to create, build, distribute, and educate instruction design material.   If instruction design is not needed, it can still help the individual, the client, or the target audience know what the real issue is.

A point that was made later in the chapter I was about predicting needs as well.  I think this is particularly interesting because even if at first if it is found that a instruction design is not needed it does not mean that one will not be needed later.  Some times the need assessment can let the designer or company foresee a need for instruction design later.  I don’t believe that there is any instance that could happen in which need assessment is not important.   I think that there will always be a need to ask “why,” and that is what need assessment does.

The next step would be to know what kind of need is needed.  There are 6 types of needs listed in the book.  Normative needs, comparative needs, felt needs, expressed needs, anticipation or future needs, and finally critical incident needs.  

1) Normative needs is when comparing the differences between target audience and national standards. 
2) Comparative needs is when you compare two similar groups.
3) Felt needs are when a desire to improve performance. 
4) Expressed needs are when needs are turned into action. Like registering for a course.
5) Anticipated or Future needs is when a future need for instruction design is seen and planned for. 
6) Critical incident needs are when instruction design is critical issues arrive like damaging storms, and mass injuries.  

After knowing what kind of need is taking place with your instructional design you need to conduct a needs assessment.  There are four phases to needs assessment and the phases are; planning it, collecting the data, data analysis, and the final report. Planning it involves looking at the target audience, strategy, analysis and participants.  Collecting the data includes sample sizes and scheduling.  Data analysis, involves obviously analysis and prioritization. The final phase, final report, involves purpose, process, results, and action. 

The last two section of this chapter are goal Analysis and performance assessment.  Goal analysis  is used when a needs analysis does not fit.  The book explains goal analysis "defining the undefinable."  Goal analysis happens when one person voices a need and it is assumed there is a need for it. There are six steps to goal analysis and they are; Identify an Aim, Set Goals, Refine Goals, Rank Goals, Refine Goals again, and make a final ranking.  

Performance assessment involves taking the time to see the design through.  Many times we want to just work on a project, complete it and we do not see what happens after. There are instances when it is not training that must happen to resolve a problem, but maybe procedures need to be enforced. There are many cases in which training is effective but not necessarily the answer. 
 
I am trying to think of a time where I have been involved with instructional design was not needed.   It is difficult because I personally try to take something from every learning opportunity as something gained. There are many instances where I believe there are parts to a course that are created as fillers and less about actual instruction.  I feel these are the worst kind of instruction design, because they are not about helping better anyone.

Particularly when students are forced in entry-level psychology courses to go and participate in user testing.  As part of the course you gets points.  Points should only been assigned to things in which students learn something. By being involved in these user tests, the participant gets little information about what they are involved in except that it will most likely not effect their health or emotions. The student who are undergraduates do not gain any information on the benefits of these tests, why they are being done, what the outcome should be, or the process to how these tests are set up.  I could see these tests being examples of good instruction design if the students gained anything from this forced instruction.

I am not sure if this counts as a time in which instruction design was not needed.  I understand the context of instances when instruction design may not be needed but cannot think of a true example. I also feel coming up with a faux example in which it was not needed may end up being me just be rearranging information from other examples given in the book or from stories I have heard.   This is why I gave the example I did.  

Overall this chapter was a little lengthy but was also very informative.  Met with my group member for project two.  Looking forward to completing that project because I think Zina and I will be creating a very informative project in relation to instruction design. 

As part of taking a class on designing effective learning environments, I thought it would be beneficial to blog about what we are learning in class. 

Currently we are discussing "what is instructional design?".  Instructional design is diverse in methods and students. Instruction design is effective and cost effective. Instruction design is teaching a very specific learner.  Instructional design is working with people.

We are also discussing how instructional design is defined.  Instructional design is a very loose term.  A lot of time a person is called a instructional designer because they know the technology, like blackboard.  But we are the instructional designers. We are the ones creating the material, technical people just place your content on forms like blackboard.  They are not giving you advice on how to make the content more effectively delivered to your students. What is meant about the last sentence the content is the subject....I do not mean chose a video over a powerpoint slide. 

As instructional design instructor it is our job to know as much as we can about our students.  Our instructor worked with another student in class a few semesters ago to google all the students before the class the course begins. The question that then comes up is how do you design a course then without knowing the students? Many times you need to create a class without knowing the kinds of students that will be registering or taking your course. 

How do you know the criteria to create a course? How do you know instruction design can help students learn the best. If we think of the process like making a mean, you need to make a recipe of things you know will be needed to make a meal.  By knowing the parts that are needed to teach students something specific, then you can then start to look into the students that will be needing that specific information. 

As part of the class we are required to read "Designing Effective Instruction," sixth edition by Morrison, Ross, Kalman and Kemp.  The part of I found to be the most interesting was this idea of a design model.  The model, asks four questions. "1) For whom is the program developed. 2) What do you want the learners to learn. 3) How is the subject content or skills best learned. 4) How do you determine the extent to which the learning is achieved." (Pg 14) 

Overall the communication in class has been extremely interesting.  I can't wait to write more about it!