INLS 214: USER EDUCATION

NOTES ON INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

Note: The model and notes are taken from various textbooks on instructional design and teaching -- see bibliography for more detailed coverage of any of these topics.

Needs Assessment ... Learner Analysis ... Instructional Objectives ... Assessment ... Strategies and Activities Development... Materials Selection ... Implementation ... Evaluation

NEEDS ASSESSMENT

In instruction, this step is usually taken to be determination of the content. The process of needs assessment determines the gaps between what is and what ought to be.

Three important points are:

• The needs assessment process concentrates on results rather than means.
• The content using this process is content that has not yet been mastered by the student.
• The procedure recognizes that a value judgment is involved.

Three categories of needs should form the foundation of educational content.

1. The needs of the learner
2. The needs of society
3. The intrinsic importance of the subject matter.

Five sources used to determine what ought to be taught are:

1. Established standards, e.g., state and national standards and curriculum guides.
2. What is taught elsewhere, presumably in some "model" school
3. What will be needed in the future -- using forecasts and long-range planning
4. What the population to be taught expresses a design to learn (Oh, radical thought -- ask the user)
5. What the students request to learn

Needs Assessment Procedure

The four steps to an educational needs assessment are as follows:

1. Generate goals -- what should be taught
2. Rank in order of importance (at least perceived importance)
3. Determine the extent to which there is a gap between what is and what ought to be
4. Identify the priority order in which the needs should be addressed.

LEARNER ASSESSMENT

Learner analysis identifies those characteristics of the learner that will influence the selection of instructional materials and activities. Learner characteristics are the result of genetics, development of personality, motivation, and adaptation to the environment. Most of these characteristics are neither good nor bad and some learners will possess a given characteristic to a high degree, some to a moderate degree and some not at all.

Physiological characteristics that affect learning include obvious aspects like blindness, deafness, inability to use arms or legs. Also important are characteristics like preference for working in well-lighted vs dimly lit environments, preference for learning at a certain time of day, need for mobility, tactile stimulation, kinesthetic learning, amount of sound in the environment, and the like.

Of affective characteristics, motivation is perhaps the most important. Learners are motivated by a variety of things -- whether they like to work in groups or alone, whether they prefer spelled-out instructions or prefer unstructured tasks.

Many student learning style instruments exist. Some examples of the dimensions considered by these instruments include:

• Auditory linguistic (learner prefers to learn through the spoken word
• Visual linguistic (learner prefers to see words in order to learn
• Auditory numerical (learner learns easily from hearing numbers and oral explanations)
• Visual numerical (learner prefers to see numbers in order to learn)
• Audio-visual-kinesthetic combination (learner likes a combination of the three basic modalities)
• Individual Learner (learner prefers to work alone)
• Group learner (learner likes learning with others)
• Oral expressive (learner prefers to share knowledge by telling others
• Written expressive (learner prefers to share knowledge by writing

Generally, it is recommended that educators attempt to individual instruction on the basis of learner characterstics and directed to a learner's strengths, although learners should also be encouraged to strengthen areas of secondary preference. Usually this involves provided options and alternatives.

INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES

Some notes written for the User Education class about instructional objectives might be helpful here. Please see http://ils.unc.edu/daniel/214/Objectives.html. I particularly favor the ABCD method of writing objectives described on this page but repeated here for your convenience. ABCD objectives contain four parts:

• A = Audience -- a description of the learners (refer to the learner analysis above. Sometimes the audience is omitted from the objective statement as it is assumed.
• B = Behavior -- a description of the behavior that demonstrates that the goal has been reached. For a suggested list of verbs to be used depending on what level of learning you want students to achieve (recall or critical thinking) see Bloom's Taxonomy.
• C = Conditions -- a description of the conditions under which the behavior will be performed. The conditions are sometimes called the "givens". For example, "given a calculator, the student will ..." or "for an open book test, the student will ...". Conditions do not always have to be included but if the designer needs to be aware of what they are.
• D = Degree to which -- a description of the degree to which the stated behavior must occur for the instruction to be judged successful. This is the assessment piece. The degree to which the behavior can be demonstrated includes:
  • Time to completion -- ex., "within 10 minutes"
  • Minimum number of correct actions -- ex., "at least four"
  • Percent or proportion -- ex., "at least 50% correct"
  • Limitation of departure from a fixed standard -- ex., "within five inches of target"
  • Consecutiveness -- ex., exhibit desired behavior "for at least three consecutive days"
  The degree statement can be simplifed by reference to a rubric that describes excellent, good, acceptable, unsatisfactory levels (see http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/assess.html for one of the many webpages that address how to create rubrics or that provide reference to existing rubrics that might be modified).

ASSESSMENT OF PERFORMANCE

Assessment is best considered when learning objectives are being formulated. If you follow the ABCD method the assessment method is build in to the instructional objective. Assessment methods need to be considered before choosing activities, materials and strategies because the method of assessing learner progress will affect the choice of these aspects.

Four questions should guide the development of an assessment plan:

• What do we want students to know and be able to do?
• What will count as acceptable performance?
• How can we ensure that judgments about performance are consistent?
• How will we provide feedback?

Authentic assessment is a term often used to indicate an assessment that takes place in a real-life context. Some guidelines for selecting authentic content include:

1. Material should be based on important concepts. Teachers should decide the essential themes and ideas to be learned and the assessment should be directly related to them.
2. Material should be congruent with state and national standards and curriculum guidelines. Connections between what students have previously learned and what they are now being taught should be easy for students to make.
3. Material should have real-life experience as a basis. Concepts and problems should have applications in the world outside the school environment. Resource-based learning can contribute to this aspect.
4. Material should take into account the developmental progression of students and build on prior knowledge. If necessary background is missing, it should be included in the course content.
5. Material should demand a high level of thinking from the students. Reflection by both the teacher and the students is an important part of authentic assessment. Students should be asked to appraise their own learning and to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Teachers should reflect on the appropriateness of the content and assessment methods and the effectiveness of activities and instructional strategies.

Four main categories of assessment include tests, portfolios, performances, and personal contact (observation and interview) with students.

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES DEVELOPMENT

Students employ learning strategies to assist them in acquiring, interpreting, broadening or deepening, retaining, and using knowledge.

Teacher-oriented activities are those in which the teacher provides the majority of the structure, guidance, and reinforcement. Teacher-oriented activities include lectures, field trips, drills, demonstrations and teacher-led class discussions.

When the main source of structure, guidance and reinforcement is the other learners, then the following group-oriented activities might be considered: problem-solving or brainstorming, debates, group discussions, group projects, and dramatics (role playing, storytelling, plays, reader's theatre, puppet shows).

If the individual learner is to provide the majority of the structure, guidance and reinforcement, then student-oriented activities will be selected. These would include preparing written presentations (book or video reports, essays, reports on events), preparing oral presentations (speeches, storytelling, power point presentations, puppet shows), Preparing other kinds of non-print presentations (paintings, models), Individual assignments without products (learner might be left alone to read, view, listen, etc. or some amount of teacher or peer interaction might occur), Laboratory experiments, Leading a group.

Some learning tools are important for all students to have. Some of these tools and strategies to achieve them follow:

• Establishing set -- activating background knowledge. This can be accomplished by creating concept maps, making lists of relevant terms and definitions, predicting central ideas or events, creating huypotheses or making assumptions about material to be learned, checking the validity of information already possessed.
• Structuring information -- identifying main and subordinate ideas. Accomplished by creating concept tress, information maps, schemata. Outlining and note-taking skills are fundamental. Sometimes drawing a picture or making a diagram can help.
• Locating criteria information -- locating the important information relative to what needs to be learned.
• Generating questions -- hypothesizing, brainstorming, making predictions, estimating, and creating definitions and rules.
• Checking self-perceptions -- reflecting on how new material changes what was previously known, testing relationship of new concepts to others, formulating new predictions and hypotheses.
• Motivation
• Summarizing the lesson -- paraphrasing the information in the learners' own words, describing and arranging the most important concepts and their relationships, making diagrams, concept trees, and schemata.

MATERIALS SELECTION

Instructional materials are an important part of any teaching process. Students spend a lot of time viewing, listening to, and to otherwise interacting with instructional materials. Often times the materials needed will be created in-house. When they are selected (or modified) from available material consideration should be given to selecting an appropriate format, identifying materials to be used, finding reviews and previewing the material and then evaluating the use of the materials with learners.

When selecting a format, equipment availability and learner characteristics and preferences may guide the selection. It is valuable to read reviews. Previewing instructional material before use is also a wise practice. The preview should involve rating the material for its appropriateness for the learner and for the instructional objectives. The final task is to evaluate the materials selected in use to determine how many students reached the objective and, if not, whether there are commonalities of behavior among those who didn't reach with thought given to how to modify the lesson to make up for the deficiencies.

IMPLEMENTATION

Up to this point the steps in the instructional design process help the teacher determine the learning need, analyze the learners, establish goals and objectives, design performance assessments, develop activities and select appropriate instructional material. During the implementation, the teacher acts as both educator and manager of the process.

As educator, the teacher needs to be aware of any students who do not possess good learning skills (the "learning tools" described above in the learner analysis section) and determine how to compensate. A continuing goal of all instruction is learning how to learn more efficiently and effectively. Some of the compensatory activities can include:

• Outlining the main points to be covered and reviewing previously learned and related material
• Using appropriate note-giving techniques that structure the information.
• Using aids to help the student focus on the information, e.g., video cameras, oversized models, changes of voice quality for important points.
• Questioning students throughout the presentation -- calling on students who have not raised their hands and looking for nonverbal signals as indicators of participation. "Centering" questions cover material presented up to that point; "expansion" questions lead to the next point.
• Providing appropriate feedback to a student's response.
• Varying the pace of the presentation using student responses as a monitor for pacing. Generally, the fastest rate should occur at the beginning and the end of the presentation.
• Paraphrasing and summarizing the important points during and after the presentation. At the conclusion, students can help summarize the main points.

If the students are doing group work, the following suggestions may be helpful:

• Provide specific, clearly stated goals for each group
• Make sure the group has a leader who has good learning skills
• Provide an outline of activities and information to be collected
• Provide an example of the product to be produced
• Make a list of questions to answer and include regular checks to see if answers are adequate
• Break down a large project into smaller assignments and provide immediate feedback
• Build a summarizing activity into the assignment so that the information will be synthesized into a coherent whole.

Some suggestions for teacher activities relative to the level of learning.

• For associative learning, make information meaningful by, for example, using rhymes, relational phrases (e.g., Every Good Boy Does Fine for notes on the musical scale), using concrete words and not abstract terms. Provide for repetition and practice and chunk the learning into bite-sized pieces.
• For discrimination learning, point out differences and make sure learners are familiar with the attributes to be used in the discrimination.
• For concept learning, provide clear definition using familiar vocabulary with a wide variety of examples.
• For problem solving, provide a structure conducive to solving the problem and provide guidance for recording information, testing hypotheses and managing the process.

The teacher is also an information manager and must keep track of the information to be presented. Usually a lesson plan that includes the primary instructional objective, a description of the activities, reminders of the learner characteristics, and criteria for assessment provides a helpful road map. Another useful list might include

• the motivating activity
• a description of the experiences (outline of the lecture, questions for discussion and main points to be made)
• provisions for participation (key questions and responses to watch out for)
• materials needed
• the summarizing activities.

The teacher must also manage the physical environment attending to learner preferences as much as possible (temperature, light, noise-level, design of the learning area).

EVALUATION

Evaluation is sometimes differentiated into formative and summative. Summative occurs at the end when you look at all aspects of the lesson and determine what worked well and what could be improved if the lesson is ever taught again. Formative evaluation is ongoing and allows mid-course corrections. The two primary questions for evaluation are:

• Did the learners achieve all the objectives to the level specified?
• Are they ready to learn more?

Data for the evaluation include results of the assessment, responses to attitude surveys, results of student conversations, comments by impartial observers, comments from experts. At the end each step in the instructional design process should be re-examined to determine if there was sufficient knowledge, if the steps in the process were followed, if the activities were appropriate, and that the implications for the next reiteration are carefully considered.

Notes revised 5/18/2005