Kapp Notes: How Long Does It Take to Develop One Hour of E-Learning-Updated for 2009
Updated ratios for developing e-learning at different levels of interactivity (with links to a few other surveys)
7 Invaluable Thoughts about Film Making That Applies to Instructional Designing too! | The Writers Gateway
Tips gleaned from the book "Directing the Story," applied to instructional design. Good ideas about storytelling and focusing on the audience.
The eLearning Coach » Blog Archive » 10 Qualities of the Ideal Instructional Designer
Recognizing that most instructional designers don't have a degree in the field, this post argues that it's less important for IDs to have a degree than to be "self-didacts" interested in learning about everything on their own. This also includes a list of 10 qualities of instructional designers.
Clive on Learning: It's not enough to be a professional, you also have to act like one
Good points on acting like real professionals, not just "order takers" when developing training/learning
<p>You wouldn't hire an interior designer only to inform.them that you've already chosen all the colour schemes and furnishings; you wouldn't engage an accountant and then explain to them the way you wanted them to process your figures; you wouldn't employ a fitness trainer and then tell them what to include in your workout; you wouldn't buy a dog and then insist on doing all the barking.</p> <p>So why, then, do we continue to encounter situations in which line managers tell the guys from l&d exactly what they want in terms of learning interventions, with the expectation that the they'll simply take those instructions and run. </p>
5 Common Visual Design Mistakes - The Rapid eLearning Blog
Common visual design mistakes made by instructional designers, plus links and resources for further reading.
1. Not Considering the Impact of the Visual Design
2. Lack of Unity
3. Graphics Don’t Match
4. Confusing Use of Contrast
5. Misuse of Fonts
Here’s Why You Need an E-Learning Portfolio - The Rapid eLearning Blog
Benefits of a portfolio plus tips on what to include and what to do if everything you do is proprietary
Jonathan's ID: The Various Roles of Instructional Design (work in progress)
Ideas on the different types of roles played by instructional designers, attempting to differentiate between instructional designers vs. instructional developers, instructional multimedia developers, etc.
Free e-Learning | MinuteBio
Directory of free online courses, sorted in categories including art, science, computers, and instructional design.
7 Tips for Better E-Learning Scenarios - The Rapid eLearning Blog
Mostly common sense type stuff if you've done scenarios before, but if you've never created them this is a good way to break it down so it seems more manageable
Learning Visions: Describing What You Do: Instructional Design
Fun discussion on how you explain what you do when you're an instructional designer. I think it might be easier to explain for those of us in online education; most of the time if I say I develop online college courses people grasp the gist of it.
Will at Work Learning: New Research Report on Using Culturally, Linguistically, and Situationally Relevant Scenarios
Research on how to support learning with scenarios that are relevant to the specific situation. Even though this is explicitly about workplace training, the major recommendations could be adapted for instructional design in education contexts too.
Utilize decision-making scenarios. Consider using them not just in a minor role—for example at the end of a section—but integrated into the main narrative of your learning design.
Determine the most important points you want to get across AND the most important situations in which these points are critical. Then, provide extra repetitions spaced over time on these key points and situations.
Innovate: A Learning Theory for 21st-Century Students
The author calls this a new learning theory combining behaviorism & cognitivism. I see a new instructional design model that combines elements from a number of different sources, but I'm not sure I see a new learning theory. The model seems very complex; how long would you have to work with this before you internalized all the separate parts of the model?
Student results were better using this model. However, the control group was tested before doing a roleplaying game and the experimental groups did the game prior to testing. This could just show that roleplaying helps students understand characters in the Aeneid. Free registration required.
With its inclusion of <a href="javascript:open_win('extra.php?id=3158',650,750,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,5,'extra');">game elements</a>, which foster attention, memory, and motivation, SCCS provides a bridge between behaviorist and cognitivist learning theories.
SCCS learning theory focuses on the formation of <a href="javascript:open_win('extra.php?id=3011',650,775,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,5,'extra');">schemata</a> in the process of learning, particularly <a href="javascript:open_win('extra.php?id=3206',600,625,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,5,'extra');">social-connectedness</a> and <a href="javascript:open_win('extra.php?id=3207',600,375,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,5,'extra');">cognitive-connectedness</a> schemata.
Students engage their social-connectedness schema in a set of behaviors that I describe as “link, lurk, and lunge”: Students <em>link</em> up with others who have the knowledge they need; they <em>lurk</em>, watching others who know how do to what they want to do; and they<em> lunge</em>, jumping in to try new things often without seeking guidance beforehand (Brown 2000).
The cognitive-connectedness schema structures a student's ability and desire to know how what they are learning connects to a larger picture.
Role Models in Educational Technology on Ada Lovelace Day | Janet Clarey
Extensive list of women in educational technology, including many bloggers. A number of new names for me here.
AG09 - IDZone: Graphic Resources
Graphics and graphic design resources for instructional designers
How to Choose the Right Color Scheme for your e-Learning Project. | LearningChange, Intl - Performance Improvement, Facilitation Training, e-Learning + Instructional Design
Basic tips for color as a communication tool in e-learning
Whatever You Do, Don’t Drop Practice | Tom Werner
Summary of research which compared courses with the same content but with specific elements of Gagne's instructional events removed. The strongest correlation with student performance and satisfaction was with practice with feedback. (This is an old post, but it's moved since I originally bookmarked it.)
The only instructional element that really matters is practice with feedback.
In the Middle of the Curve: Wendy W - Knowledge Gardener
Tony Karrer suggested we might be known as "management consultants" in the future, but I like Wendy's "Knowledge Gardener" much better
Thinking about the tools I'm building and the programs I'm developing - that seems more akin to the way I want my job to evolve. As a "knowledge gardener."
So I've decided that my next 5 years will be spent as a "knowledge gardener." Helping people get the information they need. Encouraging people within my organization to talk to each other and share what they know. Facilitating learning when they need and want it (preferrably in much smaller chunks than they are getting now).
Multimedia Learning » Compliance Poetry
Have boring content you want to make more interesting and memorable? What about putting it in poetry form? This is a creative use of poetry to create memorable summaries of copyright law. If intellectual property law can be made simpler to understand and remember, can't your content too?
An absolutely riveting online course: Nine principles for excellence in web-based teaching
Not a whole lot new to me here, but a solid collection of principles to guide online facilitators. If you're looking for an introduction for facilitators or administrators who aren't familiar with online learning or don't really "get" why you can't just shovel face-to-face content into an LMS to have a great course, this would be a good way to help show what's required to go beyond the mediocrity typical of many online courses.
<h3>Principle 1: The online world is a medium unto itself. </h3>
<p>
The search for excellence begins with this principle: The online world is a medium unto itself (Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; Ellis & Hafner, 2003). It is not just another learning environment, like a separate classroom down the hall; it is a categorically different learning environment. There are vastly different dynamics in online versus on campus courses.</p>
Principle 2: In the online world content is a verb.
We are moving to a mode of learning that is less dependent on information acquisition and is more centered on a set of student tasks and assignments that make up the learning experiences that students will engage in, in order to meet the objectives of the course (Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000). In the online world, content is a verb.
Principle 5: Sense of community and social presence are essential to online excellence.
Establishing a sense of community often signals movement to a deeper learning experience (Benfield, 2001). It is through sustained communication that participants construct meaning (Garrison, et al., 2000) and come to a more complete understanding of the content. Indeed it is through such interaction and through attending to the processes of learning and teaching (as opposed to attending only to content) that a deeper rather than a surface approach to learning is encouraged (Ramsden, 2003). Without this connection to the instructor and the other students, the course is little more than a series of exercises to be completed.
Principle 7: A great web interface will not save a poor course; but a poor web interface will destroy a potentially great course.
Principle 8: Excellence comes from ongoing assessment and refinement.
Concise writing is best for elearning » Making Change
A concise post pulling a bit of research where the lesson with the fewest words resulted in the most learning. Nice argument for keeping your e-learning short, although look at the original to see what they were actually studying in context (scientific processes with cause and effect, using visuals as well as text to explain).
Learning in Tandem: Instructional design is dead
One instructional designer's reflections on the problems in the field, including an over-reliance on systematic processes and an under-reliance on actual research
Basically, ID as it is currently taught is just following the process, step by step. It's not rocket science. What IS rocket science (or at least a lot harder) is to figure out how to apply process with the endless number of variables that affect any learning need. This is where ID falls short. Instructional designers in too many instances are so tied to the models and the process that the variables and subtleties of good design are sacrificed.
Call it education or instructional design...its all learning. So where do ID's fall short? To a certain extent, its following the "process" too closely. People are complex, learning is complex, motivation is complex--and no process is going to address all of these complexities. Good IDs know this and aren't afraid to go "off the reservation" when they need to. Most IDs don't.
<div>Ok, so what does this all mean? It means that designing effective, motivating learning is actually really hard. It means that instructional designers need to be really good critical thinkers. It means that as a profession, instructional designers need to be trained to not only know the process, but also how to recognize the limitations of process. <br></div><div><br></div><div>More than anything, if instructional design is going to survive and thrive as a profession, we need to be leaders--leaders in research, leaders in our organizations, and leaders in our field, not accepting the mediocre. Otherwise, instructional design is dead.</div>
Tutorials | elearninglive.com
The goal here is to create Flash tutorials specifically for instructional designers and e-learning developers. Right now there's only one tutorial (on creating a drag and drop activity using ActionScript 3.0), but he plans to add more over time.
In the Middle of the Curve: Deeper Instructional Design
Wendy Wickham's liveblogged notes from Clark Quinn's presentation on Deeper Instructional Design. Lots of ideas in this post--create models that actually help people understand the content and recognize patterns, pay attention to motivation and emotion, give learners the least they need to get them to do what's needed, create learner-centered objectives instead of designer-centered objectives, use stories and active practice.
We can't "create" learning<br>- We can design environments conducive to learning.<br>- We design learning experiences.
Don't design CONTENT, design EXPERIENCES<br>- Design the "Flow".<br>- Start bringing in emotions and the actions they take
Possibilities Abound--: Exploring, Considering and Proposing--- CCK08
Collection of metaphors for new roles for teachers and instructional designers from a number of sources. Includes sharer, pattern builder, curator, organic gardener, wizard, and environmental engineer. Interesting place to start if you're looking for different ways to think about our roles and who has the power.
Paper 2: Welcome to the Exploratorium! « Arieliondotcom the LORD-loving Learning Lion
Ideas on changing the role of instructional designer and teacher to a "sharer," focusing on creating the environment where learning connections are made and setting up guideposts to help learners find their own way.
<p>I believe that the roles of the Instructional Designer and Teacher are changing and must change in the face of the ever-increasing onslaught of information every human being faces today. Those roles must merge into the Sharer, who shows new technologies and connections to information to others while always keeping in mind his/her own role as perpetual student. </p>
<p>To do this, the Sharer must, at least in some respects, plant the environment for others, set up what may grow into connections and give opportunity for emergence in ways even the Sharer may not envision yet, but in a reasonably “safe” environment for exploration.</p>
The Teacher/Sharer, parents and student collaborate on ensuring that whatever method the student is using is assisting in wayfinding toward those goals. If more connections are made, so much the better. But along the path, like signposts, each of the connections (parents, Teacher/Sharers) and each tool (video, Second Life, writing, drawing, blog, podcast, etc.) used to connect to people will prompt the student for responses (dates, opinions, responses to readings) of the set curriculum, but framed in the context best suited for that student. A record of the waypoints shows how the student connected and which connections seemed to spark the most activity and best learning. If the student misses a certain number of waypoints, the direction of the connections is adjusted until success is achieved.
Systems thinking and innovation | effectivedesign.org
Live blogged notes from AECT about systems thinking, innovation, and games for learning. Lots of side comments too, including some good connections to instructional design and getting too bogged down in multiple theories.
This is exactly what has happened to instructional design, and could by <a href="http://effectivedesign.org/2008/02/11/instructional-design-in-academia-where-theory-and-practice-rarely-meet/">why theory and practice don’t meet</a>. <strong>So much theory has been introduced that we can no longer see how instruction is actually designed.</strong> That’s why I think many times it has become easier for novice (in this case non-academically trained) designers can do it so often. They are not encumbered by the fog of theory.
How to Build Quick Elearning Demos for Your Portfolio « One-Stop Resource for Instructional Designing
Rupa discusses common reasons why instructional designers don't have work for a portfolio and suggests how to put together some quick demos in Captivate or Camtasia to show off your skills.
Learning Environment Design « Learning Journal
A model for instructional design built on ADDIE but with the goal of supporting learning environments rather than just developing courseware
Main Articles: 'New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies', Ariadne Issue 56
Schemas for categorizing the use of pedagogies, learning theories, and technologies. For example, Table 1 maps learning theories (behaviorism, cognitive constructivism, social constructivism, and situated learning) against types of technologies. Online communication tools offer more potential for social constructivist interaction and joint construction of knowledge.
This article also suggests a way to map tool use along three dimensions:
- Individual - Social
- Information - Experience
- Passive - Active This isn't a simple framework where a single tool always is used the same way. Blogs can be more social or more based on individual reflection, and could be at different places in that framework depending on the actual learning activities.
» What Everyone Should Know About Working with Subject Matter Experts The Rapid eLearning Blog
Tips for working with SMEs:
- Don't expect SMEs to be experts at learning theory
- Present good examples of what you think will work
- Everyone is working for the organization's success