Instructional Design - If, When and How Much? Learning Circuits Big Question for February

03/02/2008 by nicola.

Learning Circuits big question for February is Instructional Design - if when and how much?

Have decided to answer using 3 scenarios/projects which I have had some input into at some point; and outline where I felt key instructional design discussion and decisions were made.

For the purpose of these scenarios am using a definition of instructional design as the processes involved to design and structure learning outcomes and the online content in a meaningful, relevant and enjoyable way as possible; so that concepts are related, practiced, evaluated during the learning; and applied back to their work practices.

Or why we’re doing this, what is the core stuff we are going to cover in this course, how should we present it, in what order, should it be assessed, how and how do we make it entertaining enough to make people feel that it was worthwhile studying it.

1. Instructional Design involvement - up to the point where we started using an authoring tool:
Scenario - 1999/2000 - corporate - performance/development objectives for approximately 500 financial product sales staff or ‘first-line’ sales managers, budget >£1k. Project time to completion = 6 weeks. eLearning had not been used at this company before. The team for this project consisted of one training mgr who had some knowledge of eLearning who had previously been a sales director, 2 training administrators who had no previous experience of eLearning but were going to develop the module and myself in a sort of PM/eLearning design role. We were all in the same location so communication was done via F2F meetings and reviewing documents via email when not able to meet.

At the first meeting, ID was at the heart of discussion. We decided to use ADDIE - Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation because it was a good model with clear phases of development for those who had no previous eLearning experience could easily use it. As training administrators, they had previously seen/used training development plans, classroom notes, so it felt ‘familiar’. As eLearning had not previously been used in the company, using ADDIE was a good model to showcase eLearning development ‘phases’ to both IT professional with no knowledge of eLearning and ‘decision makers’ within the company who had no or limited pc experience. We also decided to follow a process which involved a developing a rapid prototype shell so we could identify early on if we were heading off track and/or off budget.

The topic was about writing performance and development objectives, so we spent a long time at the beginning trying to decide what the learning objectives for the eLearning should consist of - so that we could practice what we were preaching. Also couldn’t move onto any specific content or how to structure it, before we were clear about what an eLearning objective was, whether it was essentially different to ones written for a F2F session and why.

A nice unexpected benefit of the discussion about objectives, was that it helped to structure the content because the sales staff had not really ever used performance/development objectives in a meaningful way before and/or knew what they were, understood that they could be specific about relating it to financial or other goals they were trying to reach outside of work - objectives had previously been seen as something to just have an annual chat about. Before starting to sketch out on screen, we discussed what key areas needed to be included i.e. what is an objective, why its important, examples of good and bad objectives, useful writing tips for objectives (e.g list of words that can be used which can be measured) and opportunities to put it into practice.

These were written up into a document along with the learning objectives, and some introductory information about the what and why we were doing the course in the first place and who it was for, some indication of expected timescales to complete the learning. We needed to decide if anyone studying this would benefit from being able to contact others studying the same course.

We then moved onto starting to sketch out some sample screens (initially flipcharts so one sheet was one screen etc) then we moved to PowerPoint.However after doing 3 or 4 screens we realised that PowerPoint was not providing enough functionality in terms of creating rollovers, tooltips, complex linking and creating simple self-assessment questions and due to the time constraints of people involved and budget, we moved to an authoring tool instead.

2. Instructional Design involvement during the actual content development:
Scenario - 2001/2002 - corporate - rollout of eHR application to approx 800 managers and field staff, budget approx £1k. Team was 1x learning designer, 2x eHR SMEs, 1x PM, 1x field training administrator, 1x IT account manager. Project time to completion = appprox 8 weeks. All of team based in different locations so communication was mostly via conference calls and email. Had previously agreed on a blended learning approach with some F2F training of superusers/field training admin staff and then online learning for everyone else.

Did not have as much discussion as above scenario, learning objectives and plan drafted, circulated and reviewed, then actual content development began using an agreed authoring tool. As above, we also needed to decide if anyone studying this would benefit from being able to contact others studying the same course. At that point we did not have enough developer experience and budget to create branching within the course itself so we created two separate versions - one for manager (who had extra responsibilities, tasks to use within the eHR application) and one for everyone else. Structuring the content included how best to present it - e.g show an example, then give an opportunity to try it out themselves for each task.

It was decided to use either screen capturing tool or just input sequences of screenshots as graphics. Content needed to be structured so that we were not asking people to try and complete e.g. a timesheet before they had figured out how to login. Another ID decision we needed to make was that there were a number of sections to be completed, so how to create an interactive menu and if possible a button where they could click to where they had previous left off. We decided to have a menu and a help button ‘link on every screen at the time.

Also navigation per screen, use of next and back buttons, where to put them on the screen where they were most ‘intuitive’ to a larger number of users - to do this, we mocked up one section quickly and tested it with a user group. Another decision was around use of hint & tips, where - how and we decided for consistency to use an icon for each with explanations for all of this on the help screens.

3. Instructional Design involvement - if, when and how much?
Scenario - 2008 - academic - module on electronic engineering - signals and communications for a group of approximately 120 first year engineering students (this is not an actual module released for students but was a sample module I was asked to create as part of VLE familiarisation recently) budget=actually we didn’t specify one, so lets go with £0 Estimated project time to completion = 6 weeks.

If I was doing this for real, I would have assumed a PM/elearning design advisory role and a tutor /lecturer would be the signals and communications SME. Faced with no budget and the time constraints, will be limited in some degree to expertise and use of free interactive content design tools experience on both mine and the lecturer’s part.In this case it is possible (but unlikely) that the lecturer has no experience of using a computer at all. If the lecturer has no pc experience, it is likely that the concept of online learning and how it may differ to F2F training in terms of structuring the content will be completely new. This module already has some structure of concepts or areas, due to having been delivered in a previous year.

The first decision would be based on the audience, will they be coming on site to attend lectures, so will any online content be part of a blended approach or will there be students studying internationally so need a complete online solution. This is a decision which is not 100% an instructional design decision, although it would be useful to have input from someone at this point who could quickly outline some possible scenarios and costs (if there is no previous experience of delivering online) which an instructional designer can do. This decision wil be based around the faculty’s strategy for students in that academic year and te fact there is no budget for online course development.

There is a VLE available where media including word documents, slides, audio and video recordings can be uploaded. There are facilities to create online discussion forums which can be grouped, online live chat, assessment questions and quizzes using 10+ types of questions can be created.
An ID decision at this point would be how to structure the module on the VLE, how to help students using it for the first time, quickly find sources of help, how to provide students with an area where they can find specific times, details of their course and any assignments. Also how to design an area where students can get to know each other online e.g. would you have an introductory discussion area with an icebreaker activity. Another ID decision may be to decide if there is a need for a more casual discussion area such as a learning cafe and how this is managed. These are decisions to be taken before getting into the actual subject at this point.

On a completely different note to the above scenarios, we are starting to look at learning within virtual worlds and I think this is a big challenge for instructional designers - i.e. if, when and how much of an environment do you need to design, what and why.

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