What I am excited about our instructional design project is to see how a constructivist based lesson works from a design stand point. Almost every course I have worked on has been from primarily an empirical viewpoint, focusing on papers, blog posts, and standardized testing. We picked an interesting topic to tackle – one that does not lend itself well to stereotypical design. Hopefully that is what will make it advanced instructional design. So ultimately I am excited to get to do something outside of the box.
What am I nervous about for this project? Sometimes I worry that we might have bit off more than we can chew. There are so many parts that could go into this – from outreach to potential students to alumni engagement. Thankfully we decided to focus on new students to the program. It has also been a bit difficult to get my team to stay on schedule with the initial steps. I had hoped we would get our feedback for the other team to them by today, but today is almost over and that doesn’t look to happen. We also have a silent member or two, and that makes me nervous when one or two need to step out and do something. I guess I somehow fell into the defacto leader position for the group. Or at least, I am the one prodding and emailing and reminding and initiating. I am also concerned with how we will integrate the feedback from the other group. Most of it was pretty good, but one was definitely more personal opinion from a completely different paradigm than what we are going for. I can see what Warren was referring to when he talks about making sure you review stuff from the same paradigm it was written for. When someone doesn’t, it makes it hard to figure out what the hell they are talking about.
My personal vision for the project: to become something that is different in scope and design than the typical “lesson” that comes from the ADDIE process. I want to fully embrace socio-cultural theory in a way that would almost create a true culture that people want to be a part of, not just one where they are a part of it because they applied for and were accepted to a certain program. Of course, that vision is beyond the scope of what we are doing for the project, but who knows? Maybe it will catch on. We have thought about some of the tools that would make this community work that don’t currently exist (online profile system, student peer mentoring system, etc). So far we are thinking that the creation of those might be outside of the scope of this project, meaning we may have to assume they exist for the sake of the project even though they don’t. But it would still be cool to see those things come into existence also. But to be more practical, my ultimate vision for this project is to create a high quality lesson that displays advanced instructional design techniques.
Reading Notes:
Click here to read my notes for this week on Evernote
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