Trends and Issues in Instructional Design Technology

I chose to examine Instructional Design Technology in the contexts of business and industry, health care education, and P-12 education.  Several similarities that I saw were how money and time were a driving factor in IDT.  I also noticed that support from superiors was important and necessary for successful technology integration.  In both health care and education there is a huge push for problem based curriculum and technology affords ways to introduce these simulation type experiences into the classroom.  One issue that was addressed in the business chapter that I believe to be very relevant for both education and health care education is cultural trends.  We have to work to understand the global audience we will encounter and IDT is a great way to meet the needs of people from all backgrounds.  Technology opens doors to quick and easy instruction in many languages, opportunities to communicate with people worldwide, and insight into customs that might influence the learner.  I am a teacher and IDT is very important in what takes place in my classroom.  I would say the number one issue facing me personally is time constraints.  We have a strict curriculum that we must adhere to in our district, and often I am racing to meet those standards.  Technology is very useful to help me do my job as a teacher, but also as a tool for my students to use in their learning.  I love integrating new technology but struggle finding time to introduce new equipment or programs and then deal with the troubleshooting that comes with any technology.  

I believe that our current education system is in trouble when it comes to preparing our students to compete with billions of people globally for the same jobs.  I think that teachers are faced with tremendous challenges and are asked to play way too many roles to help students succeed.  My theory is that the education system today attempts to problem solve for students and make everything go their way.  However, what I have seen personally and what I know to be true, is that in order to succeed you have to adapt and show that you are able to meet the needs of your potential employer.  I think far too often we try to adapt the education to meet the need of the student.  I am a firm supporter of making sure students have the proper supports to learn, but at some point, they have to take initiative to do so themselves.  I love how in Asia there is a huge push for e-learning.  This enables learners to choose what and when they learn.  This takes initiative on behalf of the students to figure out what will help them accomplish their goals.  In e-learning, teachers teach subject matter and students have to figure out how to learn what they need to be successful in that class.  This does seem like it is very relevant and would help prepare students for the competitive society they are going to face.  I also liked how the government of Japan supported training teachers through e-learning.  E-learning allows students to individualize their instruction through their choice, not by forcing the teacher to come up with 27 different lessons for one objective.  I do think that this option provides students with a platform to be successful.  In Europe students are faced with the fact that there are so many differences in such small spaces.  The diversity that classrooms face is causing the trend of dumbing down curriculum to meet student needs.  I believe that this is also taking place in America.  Instead of offering students avenues to be successful at their stage in the education process, we are teaching to the average student hoping for buy in across the board.  I believe that strong IDT training and support would help teachers boost the rigor in the classroom while not compromising students from different educational and cultural backgrounds.  Technology is opening doors to reach groups of students like never before.  My hope is that we choose to utilize these tools and excel in our calling to educate the future generation.

Human Performance

Human Performance:

As a teacher there are always going to be performance problems with different students.  This is why I believe that having a relationship with your students and knowing your students is necessary to the success of your classroom.  Often times, I found addressing non-instructional solutions helped problems we faced and improved overall educational experience.  One big issue I noticed is the quality of home life my students were experiencing.  Often times, I had students come to class who would not pay attention or disrupt creating issues for everyone around them.  As I got to know these students I realized that there were more pressing matters keeping them from focusing on what was taking place in the classroom.  I would always have a box of goldfish and granola bars in my room because a lot of my students were simply hungry.  When you are 10 years old and you didn’t get dinner or breakfast, it is hard to come and sit still and focus.  Giving a hug and a snack and allowing the student to have a few minutes to take care of their physical or emotional needs was often time all they needed to then turn around and try whatever you asked.  I also saw this with students who were very bright and would finish assignments quickly and get bored.  It helped to always have activities or jobs for them to turn to instead of allowing time to be idle.  These simple non-instructional solutions helped my students work harder and accomplish so much more than if these issues were left untended.  

Performance Supports: 

A performance support system is set up for users to access when they need support in completing a task.  A performance support system would be very helpful when it comes to technical issues in the classroom.  My district has a technology help desk that I could contact at any time if I need support for any district issued technology.  This gave me confidence to try new things I wasn't sure about, and it helped many times during the execution of lessons utilizing new technologies.  My campus also had a performance support system in place for teachers to help us understand the policies in place.  We had a handbook that we went over at the beginning of the year but we also had a campus SWAP drive where all staff could access documents and tutorials made by fellow staff members on topics such as how to use our grade book, how to be reimbursed for expenses, how to plan a field trip, etc.  We also had a fabulous support staff who were available to come and model lessons, assist with difficult students, help gather resources, etc.  I definitely felt very supported as a classroom teacher.  As far as the issues I previously mentioned, I knew that I could utilize the counselor and school nurse to help meet the physical needs of my students.  The support staff was great with helping to come up with activities to enrich/support my students as well.  One thing all teachers know is that you can't do it all.  Educating these students definitely takes a village and I am thankful for the performance supports my school had in place to help me be successful in the classroom. 

Knowledge Management:

There are two extremely important factors for which educators must have an in-depth knowledge.  Knowledge of the curriculum and standards, and knowledge of your students.  Both are necessary to create a classroom environment that meets the needs of your students and sets them up to successfully learn the objectives of that class.  It is so important for teachers to know their students and their personalities and backgrounds to help tailor lessons to meet their needs.  I would always have my students fill out questionnaires at the beginning of the year and I would send one home for the parents to fill out.  I would keep these in the student's file to be accessed throughout the year if I had a question.  Our school also had cumulative folders for each student with information about previous schools/grades, academic testing, family, etc.  These cumulative folders held a wealth of knowledge that helped me piece together information to better meet my kids needs.  If one of my students was having trouble with a specific skill I could pinpoint when that skill was initially taught and see where they were in school, what their grades were for that skill, etc.  This helped me figure out where gaps in education were occurring.  The other important factor is knowing your curriculum and objectives.  I had to have lesson plans for class each day.  This meant that I had to know what I was teaching so I could tweak it for my students.  I had to know what was coming up so that I could factor in evaluations to make sure my students were mastering these objectives.  I had to keep up to date with assessment data, curriculum changes, etc.  I met regularly with my teammates and specialists to help design instruction to best meet my student's needs.  These meetings and regular data analysis made planning for class much easier.  Knowing my students would help me trouble shoot if they were having bad days.  Knowing the curriculum helped me plan activities to differentiate and make sure all my students were engaged.  

Informal Learning:

Some of my favorite "aha" moments have come from informal learning.  One of my favorite forms of informal learning for my classroom have come in the form of reading educational blogs.  I love seeing how other teachers teach and design lessons and organize and decorate their spaces.  Blogs have given me so many ideas and so many springboards to various topics and activities that I have gone out and researched to use with my students.  I have also utilized YouTube as a source of informal learning to learn skills that will help me with various projects.  These "how to videos" have helped me learn how to edit videos, use excel, and even paint my bathroom cabinets!  There is a wealth of information on YouTube that is at our fingertips if we only look.  When I become a librarian I hope to help my teachers connect with these valuable tools.  I hope to create a school wide pinterest type storage space where teachers can go and add locations of valuable tools and ideas they find online.  This will help other teachers access learning opportunities that have been tried and proven true.  It will also cut down on time needed to find these valuable tools.  I believe that everyone can benefit from these shared virtual pin boards.  I am a firm believer in sharing information with others, but part of the beauty of informal learning is the authentic search that is driven by need.  We are much more likely to use informal learning when we seek something that is of interest to us. 

Evaluation and Management in Education

Models of Evaluation:

Evaluation is necessary to every aspect of the classroom environment.  Too often I see people wanting to use data based solely on standardized testing scores, but as a classroom teacher, we know that this is not only inaccurate, but also ineffective in determining how you plan instruction.  Standardized testing is a valuable tool you can use when combined with other evaluation models.  I enjoyed this chapter and found it helpful to consider different ways to evaluate instruction.

I really liked reading about Patton’s Utilization-Focused Evaluation (U-FE) and I believe that as a classroom teacher I used a structure like this in managing my class.  Each week I had a “business meeting” with my 5^th grade students.  We took fifteen minutes on Friday afternoons to evaluate our week and make goals for the next week.  I started the year running the meetings and coming up with our agenda and leading discussion about what I saw that was good and what we needed to work on.  I had a mailbox on my desk where students could put suggestions or issues they had to discuss during our class meetings.  They shared their input and together we rewarded ourselves for goals accomplished and refocused on things that needed improvement.  I saw huge buy in with using this method in class.  Students felt valued and listened to.  Everyone got to have a say in our goals and they got to weigh in on desired rewards.  As the year progressed I had students help make agendas for these meetings and lead parts of these meetings.  My students really saw the benefit of goal setting and learning how to monitor their progress.  I loved watching them encourage each other during the week to stay on task and help meet our goals.  Here is a how U-FE helped us with classroom management.

U-FE Steps	Use in a 5th Grade Class
1. Conduct a readiness assessment.	Have an initial meeting with homeroom and discuss how we are a team working to achieve group goals.
2. Identify the “primary intended users” and develop a working relationship with them.	Get to know classmates and do teambuilding activities throughout the year.
3. Conduct a situational analysis.	Look at our objectives each week and what is hindering us in achieving them.
4. Identify the “primary intended uses”	Boost student morale and efficiency.
5. Focus the evaluation.	Choose our weekly goals (usually one or two)
6. Design the evaluation.	Brainstorm how we will achieve them (Ex. Bathroom breaks took too long à solution: have a competition between boys and girls to see who could finish faster)
7. Collect, analyze, and interpret the evaluation data.	As the teacher I would take notes throughout the week, students shared ideas/problems in mailbox, students had buddy system to help stay on task.
8. Continually facilitate evaluation use.	Sometimes we would have progress updates throughout the week to help keep us on task.
9. Conduct a metaevaluation.	At our weekly class meetings decide if we accomplished our goal and could check it off the list or if it needed to continue to be addressed.

The other evaluation method I loved reading about was Rossi’s Five-Domain Evaluation Model.  My last two years as a teacher I spent as a dyslexia specialist and I learned so much about assessing need during that time.  I wish I would have had all of that knowledge as a classroom teacher.  I did my best to share what I was learning with my peers and help them meet the needs of all their students in the classroom.  I believe that Rossi’s model was one of the biggest “aha” moments that I have had in education.  It is absolutely necessary in any instruction and evaluation to determine what is the objective and tailor the assignment to that objective.  So many times students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities (and students in general) get bogged down with the procedure and not the purpose.  Example: If you are wanting a student to study spelling words and handwriting is difficult for them, writing their words defeats the whole assignment.  Let them practice verbally or using a computer. Example: If you want a student to understand a scientific concept and reading is a challenge, don’t have them read an article describing this concept.  Let them watch a video or listen to it being read.  Example: When a student is assigned minutes to read for a reading log determine the purpose.  Is it fluency or comprehension?  If it is fluency, have them read a short passage over and over again for a set time and see how they improve in accuracy and speed.  If it is comprehension, let them read as quickly or slowly as they need to understand, or let them listen to an audio book or their parents read.  As educators, we have to know WHY we are assigning something. 

Rossi’s Five Domain Evaluation Model	How this looks in the Classroom
1. Needs Assessment	Determine the purpose of the assignment. Do you want students to learn a new concept or practice one already learned?
2. Theory Assessment	Explain why you are doing the assignment.  (This is especially important when assigning homework)
3. Implementation Assessment	Give clear instructions on what you want done.  Make sure each student has instructions in a way that they can understand (written instructions are always great).
4. Impact Assessment	Did the students learn a new skill or improve an old skill from this assignment?
5. Efficiency Assessment	How did students respond?  Were they able to accomplish it in a reasonable amount of time?

Student evaluation should constantly be taking place in a classroom.  Whether you are monitoring and noting visual cues (head on desk, distracted, engaged, etc.) or using data from tangible assessments, we have to remember that all students learn differently and respond to learning differently.  Allow students to show their learning by showcasing their strengths and design ways to help them grow in areas that need improvements.  When we as educators can do this, we will have happier more effective classrooms.

Leadership as a School Librarian:

There is a huge push today to incorporate technology into the classroom.  However, teachers are feeling more and more burdened by strict curriculum standards, and lack of time and support to effectively meet these standards.  They are also having to teach with more students in the classrooms and fewer resources based on budget cuts.  Time is precious to teachers who have lessons to plan, papers to grade and meetings to attend.  When I am a school librarian I will be responsible for helping to implement increased use of technology to help meet classroom needs.  I think the main thing that I will have to consider when creating professional development is how to make sure teachers see me as their ally and support, rather than one more thing to add to their already overflowing plates.  If teachers know me and trust me, and if I know my teacher’s needs; then I will be able to design professional development that will be useful and effective.  First things first, as a librarian I will need to collaborate often with my teachers.  I will need to be familiar with their curriculum and objectives in the classroom.  I will also need to know what technology is available and who my “experts” are.  I would design a series of professional development sessions using actual examples from actual classes.  I would work with teachers who are excited to use technology and help them design lessons that work.  In these sessions I would include the lesson plan, a video of the technology being used in class, teacher feedback, student feedback and then a step by step tutorial for teachers on how to create lessons using this technology.  I would have a file saved either on district cloud technology where teachers could access everything we did in the professional development sessions or make thumb drives available with the information that teachers could check out and use at their convenience.  I would also offer to come in and model teaching using the technology or co-teach a lesson.  I thought it was so refreshing to see how Brenda Litchfield included information on the importance of interpersonal skills in leaders.  I want to make sure that I am finding fresh ideas for teachers who are excited about technology and ready to try anything.  I also need to know how to support teachers who are interested but a little more timid and overwhelmed at the thought of trying something new.  Lastly, I have to figure out incentives to help teachers who are not interested at all to be willing to give technology a try.  As a leader, knowing your audience will help you to provide leadership that will inspire and encourage people to take risks and try something new.  I hope to be a leader that teachers will trust and want to work with because they know I have their best interest in mind.

Theories and Models of Learning and Instruction

1.     Epistemology (the study of what and how we come to know) is discussed in multiple chapters in this section. Distinguish epistemology from instructional methods or theories. What are the differences between theories, methods, or models of learning and epistemologies or underlying beliefs about ways of knowing?

After reading about the different learning theories in Chapter 4 and the history of constructivism in Chapter 5, I have come to the conclusion that epistemology is a part of each learning theory presented.  However, the theorists take different views on where this knowledge comes from therefore shaping the different methods discussed.  Dictionary.com defines epistemology as a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, method and limits of human knowledge.  Each learning theorist studied in chapter 4 developed their own personal sense of where this knowledge is acquired and created a form of instructional design based on these beliefs. 

·       The behavioral learning theory is based on how people respond to different interventions.  Skinner believes that if we observe behaviors and peoples responses we can best create learning environments for each individual.  I would say that this theory is based on an epistemology that revolves around the individual and not the outside world. 

·       The Cognitive Information Processing Theory is where the information is passed through different processes and stages where it can then be stored and retrieved.  This is also based on the individual learner but there is more of a focus on the information that is having to travel through these various processes. 

·       The Schema theory is based on a learners knowledge that they have already acquired or schema.  This theory focuses on what the learner already knows and therefore depends heavily where they acquire knowledge. 

·       Situated Learning Theory is based on social and cultural determinants of learning.  I believe that this theory depends heavily on the world that surrounds the learner. 

·       Gagne’s theory of learning involves nine events of instruction.  It focuses on both internal and external learning conditions so its priority is the way something is learned. 

·       Constructivism is where the learner receives info from the environment and transforms it in various ways to be meaningful.  This theory focuses on the way information is consumed by each individual learner.

There has definitely been a shift in thinking from focus on the content to focus on the learner and how they acquire knowledge.  This has helped educators create lessons that are meaningful and specific to the needs of each learner.  It is important to consider the way humans learn and retain knowledge.

2.     Chapters in this section discuss three contrasting epistemic stances: positivist, relativist, and contextualist (or hermeneutical). Positivists believe that the only truth or knowledge is objective truth. Relativists don’t believe that objective truth is possible and that all knowledge is subjective to perception or relative to a particular frame of reference. Contextualists believe that truth or knowledge is relative to context rather than individual, subjective understanding. While designers and educators with a positivist stance generally apply behaviorist principles to the design and development of instruction, those with either a contextualist or relativist epistemological framework employ constructivist theories and methods. Reflect on whether your stance is primarily positivist, relativist, or contextualist. Then, identify an instance when your perspective or stance as a learner conflicted with that of your instructor. Describe the conflict that you experienced and analyze whether opposing epistemic stances may have been at the heart of the conflict.

I believe that I fall under the guise of contextual learning.  I believe that it is important to have opinions about knowledge but we must make sure we are balancing these opinions within context.  I had a professor in undergrad that was a relativist.  She believed that each individual situation was important and that behaviors could and should change based on changes in the environment and experiences of the learners.  While I appreciated this approach to an extent, it became a bit frustrating when I had worked very hard on a project and several students in my class did not and the professor ended up giving the whole class an “A” on the project because she felt like the time constraint was too much.  I also felt like it made learning a bit unpredictable because there was not a set standard and it kind of changed from week to week.  I believe that anything you learn should have a personal spin to it, but I believe that without a consistent standard on which to base this learning, you will have a confused bunch of students trying to make sense of a changing slate.  I do think believe that situations and experience play heavily into the learning process, but they should not be the sole factor.  Content and standards are valuable and students need something by which to base their goals.

3.     Differing epistemic stances lead to differing approaches to learning and instruction, and ultimately to problem-solving. Explain differences in problem-solving when approached from behaviorist and constructivist perspectives. How do the approaches differ in both the nature of the problem to be solved and in facilitating the problem solving process? Finally, what effect might these differences have on learner motivation.

David Jonassen argues that problem solving should be the focus for all education in Chapter 7 of our text.  His theories of real world application are an important facet of student buy-in and success.  He argues that students should be presented with meaningful learning applicable to their real world situations.  This can be done from both a behaviorist and constructive perspective.  In a behaviorist perspective, students would attempt to determine outcomes based on different behaviors that were observed both before and after a different objective was addressed.  Teachers could then determine if students mastered that objective by observing these behaviors and giving students opportunity to practice the behaviors that aligned with the desired outcome.  For example, teachers in a science class could assign a question to students and then have observe students as they created trial and error experiments to answer that question.  Students would be able to answer the question when they designed an experiment that achieved the desired outcome.  This trial and error process would allow students the opportunity to explore and discover the intended learning.  This is a more individualized approach to problem solving.

Problem solving from a constructivist perspective gives students the opportunity to connect new learning with their prior experiences/perspectives.  Students are required to consider others thoughts and opinions and often work in groups.  They then construct their ideas and receive feedback from both classmates and the instructor.  I believe that this type of problem solving is useful because students have to collaborate on what they already know or what someone else already knows and then connect to their ideas.  For example, you could show a short video or have students read a text and have groups gather information to guess something from the video or text (location/author/object described, etc.).  The class could be divided into groups that are responsible for research/observation.  You could have the class engage in a debate or chat room style of discussion therefore allowing all students opportunity to develop their own ideas, but also reap the benefit of hearing the thoughts of others.  Students might be able to utilize information learned from the other groups to solve the problem.  This approach to problem solving tends to utilize more of a group dynamic.

While both of these instructional methods could be successful at helping students develop problem-solving skills, I believe that the constructivist approach is the most successful as far as garnering student involvement.  Students have to depend on each other for learning and therefore are often times more driven to accomplish the objective.  When students are doing individual trial and error they can work at different paces and you will run into the group of students who complete the work quickly and get bored and the slower learners who get frustrated.  When the students have to consider others observations and opinions they will often times work together and encourage each other to accomplish their goals.

**NEW THINKING: After reading several blogs this week I realize that I do tend to be a bit more relativist as far as my epistemology is concerned.  I still want to think and process how this looks in my classroom, but I so appreciate my fellow classmates sharing that has challenged my thinking.**