The Olympic Spirit

Our visit to the Olympic Cauldron park at the Rice Eccles Stadium brought nostalgic memories of the SLC Olympic glory days. I was reminded of how fired up we all were. Every night I watched the events on TV because they were relevant to my environment. As far as design goes... I thought it was reasonably well designed and achieved its goal of bringing back the emotions of that era. For me, because there was that emotional tie, it could have been poor design and I would have still have enjoyed the experience and rated it high.

In class, we talked about the usability factor in our formative assessment. This is a huge factor in user level of engagement. We like to use text to create our designs, yet most people do not like to read text. Think about our in-class discussions. There are a number of factors that draw us to respond to a particular post, but most of us will likely confess that we are more likely to respond to the shorter posts that have some substance to respond to. Short, interesting, and concise.

My side kick comment on the great media debate.

We wrapped up the class debate on Media vs. Method - Are you a Clark or a Kozma follower? I found it interesting... Given that the class consists of Instructional Design Ed. Technology majors, it only makes sense that most of us would lean toward the Kozma side of the debate - which is to say that yes, media does influence learning. Ultimately the class saw some logical truths from both sides of the argument and comments came up questioning if the two side could even be defined as a debate in the first place.

But...in the initial stages of the debate, the Clark supporters didn't want to commit. The class was assigned who they would initially side with. Whether or not we actually stood on that side, we were to pretend as if we did and try to argue in favor. The Clark defenders waffled and wishy washed at first. They wrote as if they really didn't want anyone to think they actually believed Clark's purist opinion so they provided disclaimers - i.e. "since I have to take the Clark side, I have to say it this way ... but ..."

As more people contributed to the article, greater ideas opened our minds to what each theorist was really saying. The written defenses started to get more fervent regardless of which side the defender was on. So who won the debate? I don't think we ever really decided, which is probably why it still remains the great debate.

Folding Flowers

A fabulous object lesson on visual media was presented in class last week by one of the groups. We learned to make a lotus flower out of a folded napkin either by video, audio, screen shots, or text. I am no paper folder, but I can see how two medias do a better job than one at teaching a procedure. I wonder if the same results would be evident if the content was more conceptual, rather than procedural. Anyhow, I can see why my son enjoys origami so much!

21st Century Testing

During the last class attended, we enjoyed a guest lecturer who talked about assessment. He brought clarity and interest to the subject after reading the chapter in the text book. The chapter in the text book had been labeled by many as "long and boring".

I must admit, I enjoyed the chapter in the text book and I find the whole notion of assessment to be interesting and fascinating. So many questions arise: What type of assessment is most effective for learners? And what about all this assessment lingo? What does it all mean? ... formative, summative, criterion referenced, norm referenced, multiple choice, adaptive, short response, extended response, comprehensive, standardized, quantitative, qualitative, ... and then some.

We tend to become more interested in subjects that we have an interest in which is why I am probably one of the few in the class who did not snooze through Chapter 7 on assessment. I think it is fascinating how a good test item evolves. Nobody realizes the work and money that go into developing a single item. The objective must match perfectly. The level of difficulty and Blooms level of thinking must be stated and evidenced. The distractors must measure not only common errors that a student would make, but they must be common errors within the realm of the objective measured. So next time you look at that CRT and want to spit, instead appreciate the strategic and crafty thought that went in to create it.

Designers ask a lot of questions.

Designers ask a lot of questions. They need to be able to get accurate answers for those questions and then make sense of the answers in a way that will influence their instruction. They essentially want to ask questions about the learning task and the learners themselves. This weeks chapter was about analyzing the learners.

The designer should ask much as they can about the learners in relationship to the design. It would be helpful to learn what skills and attitudes the learners have. It seems that this is when having a good idea of psychological educational theory would be necessary. A designer should understand the learner, how they learn and what will motivate them. The main things to consider when analyzing the learning context are the site and the "facilities, equipment, and resources that adequately support the intended instruction" (Dick and Carey pg. 105).

I am getting ready to over analyze a purchase on Ebay. I will ask a lot of questions and drive myself nutty by over thinking every minute detail about what and how I am going through the process of buying on Ebay.

Task Analysis is just that.

Today my project group did two presentations. We first presented on Online Learning. Then we led a class discussion on our assigned article about Task Analysis. I have to admit that the presentation on Online Learning was most enjoyable to study and prepare for. The article however was a snoozer to read and we really wondered if we would have any thing intelligent to say about it, let alone interesting. As we prepared our discussion and talked about what the article was trying to say, we concluded that a bunch of "Average Joe" Instructional Designers wanted to be quoted for their profound model on task analysis. However, no matter how you state it, the essential goal of task analysis is the the same - to gather information about a process that will lead to an outcome. How this information is gathered differs slightly from guru to guru, but in my opinion it was nothing to write about as profound discovery of the latest and greatest ID theory.

Online Overkill

This week I am preparing for my group's two presentations this Tuesday which both just happen to be on the same night. I will call it the Ashley, Jenn, and Laura hour. Our Instructional Media presentation is about online learning. We could spend the entire class period presenting on that topic. All of us have had experience with online learning to some degree or another. I feel like I am constantly online working or learning. I use to waste a lot of time browsing but I no longer have that luxury. Sometimes I feel like my life is online overkill. There is a reason I chose the face to face program at the U of U and not the online program at Utah State. There is something to be said for "human interaction".