Mager's Instructional Objectives

Mager clearly lays out information on instructional objectives by answering the questions every teacher must answer: why do we have to? He claims “when clearly defined objectives are lacking, there is no sound basis for the selection or designing of instructional materials, content, or methods.”  He succinctly states that if you don’t know where you are going, you can’t know how to get there.  The objective needs to say who needs to do what.  It then continues to break down the differences between overt and covert performances.  He goes a step further here and outlines ways to practice determining overt and covert behaviors.  Adding to that, he wants a degree of performance that allows both the instructor and learners to know how well they must perform the objective in order to be considered proficient in terms of things like time limits, accuracy, and quality of the final product.  He finally ends with giving a couple pages of don’ts.  There are many ‘falses’ that can be committed in instructional objectives.  Mager lays out each one and gives examples to help steer the designer in the right direction.

Following in line with the Frick and Boling book, Mager follows along and helps design instructional objectives.  Since I already have a book by Mager on Instructional Design, this did not contain new knowledge for me.  However, I do like having this article in a more condensed, digital version on my Kindle.  It makes it easier to refer to when I have it at the tip of my fingers both on my Kindle and my iPhone.  This article did provide new information in the form of the ‘falses’ of instructional objectives.  When reading through many of those, I found some that I have used in the past and I didn’t realize it was something I shouldn’t do.  Will definitely use those more in the future as I continue to develop my own objectives in my projects.

Frick & Boling's Effective Web Instruction chapters 1 and 2

In Effective Web Instruction, Frick and Boling have put together a guidebook for the novice web design that reads like a cliffs notes book.  They go through step by step instructions on how to start an effective web instruction voyage, beginning with finding your objectives and working with stakeholders.  There is a diagram at the beginning of the book that nicely lays out in a visual aspect the way one would go about designing the instruction.  The authors add in examples and real-life scenarios to help the reader move forward.  In addition, the authors give other resources for perusal to help the reader get a better understanding.  These chapters focused more on getting an analysis for the development rather than the development itself.

Frick and Boling have put together a comprehensive, yet easy to understand guide to finding objectives that will help the designer get started on the right foot.  The diagram at the beginning of the book has now been saved on my desktop as an important file that I will want to refer back to many times as I move into the individual project soon.  I also greatly appreciated the scenarios given in the book to assist in creating objectives.  I have always struggled in this area and having examples set forth for me that I can tailor to meet my needs in very helpful.  I look forward to being able to delve more into this book each week so that I can gain more examples and expertise like the ones listed in this book.  Having been in a class with both Dr. Frick and Dr. Boling, I appreciate having a more succinct, condensed version of their knowledge.

Kim and Frick-Changes in Motivation during Online Learning

Kellers ARCS theory is used to start with, assessing Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction.  This article links the Confidence component of ARCS with self-efficacy in online learning.  They also relate the lack of motivation in an online course to a lack of confidence, especially in those that are in their first online course--citing the main villain as cognitive overload.  Then, the first 5 principles are brought back in.  They link Relevance in ARCS to the first 2 principles of real world learning and student integration. Another problem discussed is the External factors, such as the learner not knowing how to use the technology required to move forward in a course and being unable to find the assistance to make them successful...the dropout rate when unable to use the pieces necessary to pass a class is pretty high.  So, this article focused on what the best determining factors are in self directed e-learning (SDEL).  First, the background of the student, why they were taking an online course, and if they have ever taken one before.  Then, motivation levels.  Those that took the class because they chose to, not because they was no other option, were more successful.

Relevance and the 2 principles in what hit me the most in this article.  As a working adult, mom, and returning student, I am much more likely to do the work and do it well if it relates to MY real world, not just the real world in general.  My world in relatively small, but incredibly full.  If I am working on an assignment for a class, while cooking dinner and grading midterms for my students, I am more likely to be motivated to devote my full attention to the class assignment if it is something I can relate to in my world.  That would be a difficult concept in classes like this though, since we are spread out all over the world and there is no way for one assignment to be relevant to everyones' own little pocket of the world.  This also links into the external and personal factors mentioned in the article.  The reasons mentioned for students motivation in SDEL make perfect sense to me.  Since it would be almost impossible for me to make it to an actual class every week, I am very motivated to do my best on the classes I have enrolled in.  If I took the online class because I didn't have a choice, I would probably start out with the wrong mindset and have a bad attitude towards it without even giving it a shot.  However, I prefer online classes, so this is not something i have had to deal with a whole lot personally.  The most motivation issues I have had are on the classes when the content is not relevant and I didn't see the value of being in the class.  However, I still persevered and finished the course with a high achievement level because of the internal motivation I have, something that was not discussed in the article this week.

5 Star Instructional Design Rating--Merrill

In this short article, it discusses the ways to rate an instructional design using a star system, just like ranking a movie or restaurant.  It has a disclaimer at the beginning warning that it may not be good to use on all types of ID,  such as references, small fact checking, or psychomotor skills.  In addition to the possible 5 stars a website could receive, there is the option of bronze, silver, or gold stars as well...leading this to be not a 5 star system, but a 15 star system overall, 3 per each of the 5 categories.  The 5 categories are problem, activation, demonstration, application, and integration.  There are standards with each category on whether or not it is successful.  For the Problem category, does it relate to the real world? For the Activation category, does it encourage the user to access their prior knowledge/experiences? For the Demonstration, is it a do as I do, or do as I say site?  For the Application, is the user able to practice with the new information prior to moving forward? And for the integration category, how does the user get to prove they know their stuff?

This seems to be a fairly comprehensive listing on what is needed for a site to be considered a good tool for learning.  The designer has many things to consider prior to moving forward with each level, and it seems to progress in a fairly intuitive order--starting small and working your way into the design until the end.
For the instructional site Learning Fractions (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/math/fractions/), I have evaluated it the following for these reasons:

PROBLEM	SILVER	Since I am a licensed math teacher, I know this category relates to the real world.  The site specifically points to things like apples.  However, it does not receive a gold because it doesn’t state why it is important to know fractions, just what they are.
ACTIVATION	GOLD	This site gets a gold star for activating prior knowledge since it uses examples all students should have come in to contact with before,  using well known fractions like half, using real world things like an apple, and recalling vocab words they should know about already.
DEMONSTRATION	GOLD	This site abounds with many examples of all kinds of fraction problems.
APPLICATION	GOLD	The site has hundreds of examples for the user to practive with following the examples that are laid out all over the page.
INTEGRATION	SILVER	The site provides many worksheets with answer keys for the user to practice with and check their work against.  However, if the user is getting the information incorrect, there is no way for the user to know where they are going wrong, just that they are.

The second evaluation, Business Plans (http://payson.tulane.edu/courses/ltl/projects/entrepreneur/main.swf) rates as the following:
***many of the links on the site refused to load, so I am going by the little inforamtion I could glean off the screens I could see and the titles of each category.

PROBLEM	BRONZE	The site begins with a story of a college student that wanted to start a pig farm in Cambodia.  It wasn’t until I got through a bit more of the tutorial that I realized this site wasn’t about Veasna’s pigs, it was about business plans
ACTIVATION	GOLD	The site allows the user to think about what the best route to take in deciding on a business plan and questions that the user needs to ask themselves to more forward
DEMONSTRATION	GOLD	This site does give Veasna as a demonstration of a good business plan, but it is at the beginning.  However, on ce getting into the tutorial, there are many examples of the types of documents needed, how to fill out things like a business plan, and so on.  It has a logical order as the what would happen in real life when navigating through the tutorial.
APPLICATION	GOLD	There are practice pages for the user to look at and see what is expected.
INTEGRATION	GOLD	There are practice and summary pages, marketing plans, and supporting documents that are printable/downloadable to take with the user to ensure they are able to follow the plan to set up the necessary documents to move forward in the business, which I think is what the website was about.**Again, since many items wouldn't open on the site, I can't be sure of all the content other than what I gathered from the small amount of information I could see and the titles on each page.

Merrill et al. (2008). Prescriptive Principles for Instructional Design

So, according to the principles of design, a learner will most likely be successful in the desired task by following these steps:
1) being task centered to engage the learner.

2) use prior knolwedge to help process new information.

3) Have demonstrations available to show the learner what is expected

4) Allow the learner to show what they have learned and provide feedback.

5) Use the newly aquired information to create a new task that uses the information

These definitely aren't new concepts since the majority of public education has been designed the same way since the inception of a school house.

Some other pearls of wisdom from the article include how the learning should take place--using more tehnology and interaction will result in higher cognition of the material than just text alone.

For some, designing task centered instructions seems like it would be difficult.  There are many older teachers, even some younger ones in my building that teach the way they way have always taught, or the way their mentor teacher taught instead of providing new and authentic tasks that hte learners can follow, or new and exciting ways to learn the material since technology has come a long way.  They would really benefit from these principles.