Greetings fellow Earthlings.
In this Blog I aim to share my
thoughts on Instructional Design, and attempt to define and explore the
intersection between ID and the UXD practices (User Experience Design) commonly
found in the application development community.
Why? Because in my day-to-day job I am responsible for the
development (and to a large extent the user experience) of applications designed
for use by Educators. I feel a better knowledge of ID will help both inform my
UX practices, and also provide deeper insight into the needs and practices of
my customers.
This Blog also serves as part of my assignment activities
for the course in Instructional Design I am currently taking at Walden University.
For my first assignment I have found four other Blogs that
feature or focus on Instructional Design concepts.
Designer Librarian
The Blog of Amanda Hovious, a Librarian working on her M.S.
in Instructional Design and Technology and the University of North Dakota.
Posts on this site vary from highly ID focused to only
slightly (or not at all) related. I find the articles well written,
informative, and well referenced. Amanda posts include topics such as
“Gamification” and Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction. I find it interesting how
much the concept of ID intersects with the role of Librarian as Educator.
There are not all that many posts on this site, so after I
finish reading the entries of interest to me, I will probably not use it in the
future, other than reference if something pops up that links back to a concept
that was well described here. I may also bookmark some of the interesting or
useful sites they link to.
Effective E-Learning
Blog
The Blog of Andrew Jackson at The Training Zone focuses on
how to motivate Learners, and improve the outcomes of e-learning courses.
Andrew has posts on topics such as SME (Subject Matter
Experts) “Rock stars”, the use of PowerPoint, “Talking Heads” and the effective
use of video for instruction. In general his posts are more about the bigger
picture of e-learning practices than specific Instructional Design theory, but
I feel this broader scope is useful and thought provoking.
This site also has a limited amount of content, and the
topics tend to be such broad scope musings that I’m unlikely to return here,
but I did find the articles worth reading through one time at least, and I will
probably record some of the URLs referred to in a couple of the articles.
Instructional Design
Fusions
http://instructionaldesignfusions.wordpress.com/
Written by Dianne Rees, an instructional designer working in
the healthcare industry in Baltimore, the author describes her blog as
“exploring the mix of new technologies, instructional design, and best
practices for elearning and training”.
This site has a large number of posts going back several
years. Articles are well referenced, informative and thought provoking. Dianne
covers topics such as Gamification, including mobile learning and alternate
realities, as well as project pre-mortems, divergent thinking, and David
Merrill’s “pebble in the pond” approach to ID, which reminds me somewhat of
another article I read recently on an “Agile” approach to ID.
It will take me a while to read through all the relevant or
interesting looking information on this site, so I will likely come back to it
from time to time rather than try to cram everything here into my head at once.
This will also give me a chance to catch up on any new postings. This may well
be a site I contribute to / comment on in the future.
Instructional Design
& Development Blog
Unlike the previous sites, this one has multiple
contributors. The Blog is authored by members of the Faculty of Instructional
Technology Services department at DePaul University.
The site has a huge number of articles going back to 2007,
with posts sorted into categories (there are 97 entries under “pedagogy”). Each
post includes an approximate reading time in the summary (typically 2 to 3
minutes).
Posts are in theory focused on the use of technology to
improve learning and include topics such as Web Fonts, MOOC’s and
Accessibility, but there are a huge number of posts on topics such as the use
of Rubrics and Play Based Learning. The site contains a wealth of information
written by people who have been working in the field of Instructional Design
and course delivery for (in most cases) many years.
As this site has a huge amount of information written by
people who are using and developing both courses and technology with an
instructional design foundation, I imagine I will return here often to read
further articles, and hopefully engage in discussion with the authors and/or
other readers on some specific topics of mutual interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment