Planning and Designing for Instruction: INTE 5100 – An Overview

Instructional design is the process used to analyze, design, develop, and evaluate learning solutions. You will identify a gap in learning or performance and design a learning solution in the form of courses units, modules, and other instructional resources.

four turquoise speaking circles from left to right with a dashed red line connecting them. The words idea, planing, strategy and success in red under each bubble. Above each bubble an outline of a head with visual of the word it represents in it.With the introduction to the course, above, we launched into a semester of selecting a project topic, then moved into addressing each concept of the ID process, shown below, to create a Solution Design to solve our chosen project.  A summary of each step is shown below, here is a link to the Solution Design document for Financial Wellness.

Detail on each unit can be found here.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Project Purpose • Intended Audience

This semester long project would find us diving into, then tackling each step in the Instructional Design.  The first step, choose a problem to solve.  I choseStracked blue shaddow of three people from the shoulders up Financial Awareness.  Far too many students graduate from university with more debt than they can hope to pay off any time in the near future.  Student loans are often easy to get and not realizing the long-term effects students simply take the maximum they offered without thoroughly thinking through the long-term effects.  This lands them in the position of spending a good portion of their paycheck on repayment, often seeing their high school classmates who did not attend college more easily navigating the financial puzzles of adult life.  The focus of my project was on helping students more fully realize the long-term effects of their decisions to accept student loans while in college.

ANALYSIS SUMMARY

Student Target Market • Knowledge • Skill Gaps • Motivation

The project focuses on students who apply for student loans and giving them the knowledge they need to understand the long-term effect of the loans, an ability to consciously evaluate their motivation as they decide how much of the loan offered they should accept, their anticipated motivation to engage in the course, and recognition of the need for a course that has the power to capture student attention, encourage retention, as well as be available at any time, in any place, during a time when students are simultaneously focused on many other life changes as well.

Words in colored hexagons with arrows connecting them: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN MODEL

Overview • Design Thinking • SAM • CCAF

Selecting an ID model based on recognition of possibly resistant learners, which points to a need for use of a human-centered methodolgy to grasp attention and create an environment for engagement to maximize retention.  The end result was a blend of Human-Centered Design Thinking, SAM, and the CCAF Model as a framework for designing the course while incorporating the CCAF model to point to a focus on impactful, interactive, instructional experiences.

PROPOSED LEARNING SOLUTION

E-learning Module • Loan Summary e-Postcard / Letter • Monthly Financial Wellness Email

Capturing the attention of potentially resistant students while simultaneously ensuring the course is available at their convenience pointed to use learning tools created with new technology housed in the university LMS.  Based on these consiferations we proposed the following structure for the learning module.

Clipboard with a piece of paper and blue pen on it. Paper has five lines with boxes to the left of each line. Each box has a blue checkmark in it.

 

  • Introductory video
  • Narrated slides to introduction content
  • Scenario based learning which would incorporate learner choice and branching scenarios
  • Learning game as review and evaluation of learner retention

INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES

Our objectives focused on

  • the impact of loan interest and future payments on finances
  • the ability to calculate interest and anticipated payments due
  • identification of optional expenses and conscious spending choices
  • consideration of work hours to supplement available funds vs acceptance of additional loan funds

EVALUATION PLAN

New World Kirkpatrick Model • Formative Evaluation • Summative Evaluation

Using the New World Kirkpatrick Model to define the underlying need for an evaluation plan our focus was on improving the program, maximizing transfer of learning to behavior and subsequent organizational results, and demonstrating the value of training to the university.  Looking for evidence of a solid understanding of the objectives takes both a formative and a summative approach with the formative period focusing on reaction and learning levels and the summative on behavior and results.

Wide arrows in a circle grow from small to large as color changes from dark blue to light blue. The last arrow has the word evaluation resting on the base of the arrow.

ASSUMPTIONS

A list of the assumptions being made during creation of the proposed course design plan.

SCHEDULE

Timelines to serve as a basis for pursuing creation and rollout of the course prior to the fall semester.

COMMUNICATION PLANFour blue circles with the icons for @, telephone receiver, envelope, and map pinpoint, one in each circle.

Laying out timelines for milestones and questions such as meeting with the stakeholders, a plan for the ID team to communicate progress between meetings, milestone advisory, beta testing communications, etc.

SUMMARY

Wrap up of the solution design with the indication that this is expected to be a multi-year project to intially complete the course, review the course layout, expectations of the developers and expecations of the stakeholders.

REFERENCES

Listed references provide an avenue for those reviewing the design solution to reference the research behind assumptions and decisions made during the design solution process.

Six brown books stand in a row, a maroon band with the title in gold is on the upper section and a volume number in gold below. Four more books lie stacked horizontally to the right.

APPENDIX

Learner Persona • In depth look at the Learning Solution • Solution Storyboard

Learner personas highlight the type of student we might encounter, their mindset, and how we might connect with them yet at the same time deliver valuable content.  The in depth look at the learning solution provides additional details into how assumptions and decisions were made while pointing to the references listed in the section above.   The solution story board provides a visual outline of the creation of the course content.