Good Instructional Design

Good Instructional Design

by Darryl Ccallens 

 

     I had an opportunity to learn more about what good instructional designs look like. It has been a very great experience and I feel so much more comfortable designing for good instruction. If I had to simply explain what good instructional design was to someone. I would say that it’s instruction that’s designed by designers who considers their students, adults, or any other participants. Good instruction design considers how students learn and what materials, methods, and technologies will most effectively change behavior. 

     

     Other examples of good instructional design I would think is for an instructional designer to be passionate about education. Good instructional design also requires great feedback on collaboration to make sure that the necessary designing occurs. Another good examples of instructional design are having good communication skills and to be organized. Throughout my experience during this summer I received some great feedback from my professor as well as from fellow classmates. That really assisted in me organizing my instructional design in a better way.

     

     “Specifying the learning environment and instructional activities is an important part of the instructional design process. It should help you answer the following questions. Will the learning environment be open-ended or directed? Will the learning environment be oriented toward the learner, knowledge, assessment, community, or some combination of these four? What teaching strategies will be employed? What will the students do during the instruction that will help them learn the content? How are the instructional activities you prescribe supported by research that indicates their effectiveness” (Brown & Green, 2020, p.155)?  

     

     As you can tell from the text,  there are many things to consider when explaining what a good instructional design looks like. Some things that I learned or rather something I learned in more detail about was needs analysis. “A needs analysis is critical in helping the instructional designer determine what instruction needs to be developed or if instruction is even necessary to help bring about a desired change” (Brown & Green, 2020, p.63).

     

     I think that one thing I will change in my own design for future trainings is that I’ll maybe add a few more videos with me popping in to give some fun facts. Overall, the training was a success. I was able to create an anger management training that would train other educators. The goal is to train these adult learners in anger management so that they can eventually give their students the same anger management training. 

     

     I chose to create my own introductory video to set the tone of the training. Two main apps that I used were Kahoots and Quizizz to provide some engaging learning tools for my adult learners. Click the link to view my training course! All the information is arranged in a google slide for convenience. The agenda breaks down each of the topics and content that will be discussed during this 30 minutes to an hour training on anger management and conflict resolution. 

     

     I’ve also included notes within the slides to help better explain each slide. That extra detail is important for my educators who are training in this course. I expect for them to be able to learn this training course material as well as the flow of this training so that one day these educators can train their students in anger management. It was so fun to design my course and I can’t wait until I’m presenting it amongst other adult learners in the near future. Can't wait to get some reactions and feedback from them!

Reference 

Brown, A. H., & Green, T. D. (2020). The Essentials of Instructional Design: Connecting Fundamental Principles with process and practice. Routledge.