Musings of an Instructional Design Specialist

" burn-out" by sophaya Work Anywhere is licensed under CC BY 4.0 Since the pandemic, the importance of instructional design has increased rapidly. You can browse any job search site (e.g., Indeed, LinkedIn) or career website on companies and universities. The need for good designers has grown exponentially, and so has the amount of stress. We are teachers, coaches, experts, and more. You can include counselors in the list as well. At the height of the pandemic, we helped our faculty go entirely online in less than two weeks. I found myself encouraging my faculty to hold on and that as Instructional Designers, we were there to help them anytime they needed us! There were occasions when I was consoling crying faculty. Instructional Designers still face the level of stress we did before, perhaps more. Burnout comes easily under these circumstances. Battling Burnout The pandemic burnout battle is affecting designers too. Those I have spoken to are tired, overwhelmed, frustrated...

  Providing detailed feedback is  an   absolute must for  effective  online  teaching.   Feedback is  a  tool  for  instructors  to communicate course content, guide , and lead students toward  a growth mindset.   One of the biggest influence s  on  students'   work is good feedback.   Without good feedback,   students  cannot improve their work and can impede future learning.   Feedback  for learning in higher education   highlight s  many studies demonstrating  technology’s ability to boost student engagement with feedback . What  D2L  tools   can f aculty use  for  giving and personalizing feedback ?   Rubrics   D2L Rubrics can be created to evaluate  activities   in  Assignments ,  Discussions,  and the Grade tools   with a  predefined set of criteria.   You can add additiona...

  Researching Communities of Practice (CoP) I have found them of great value. I joined a few CoPs such as the Instructional Design Central, ID2ID (part of my Peer Mentor program), Brightspace Community, and Higher Education Teaching and Learning (part of LinkedIn). Doing so has provided me with new ideas, advice from peers, and numerous resources. Larger CoPs would be hard to follow. Smaller groups are more effective and give you a better feel of a community. Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) faculty have an excellent opportunity to be part of a CoP. The CoP we have is the  IUP Reflective Practice Project . Reflective Practice (RP) is a project sponsored by IUP’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) to support faculty and encourage reflective and effective teaching. The reflective practice offers both monthly large group , Saturday workshops, and teaching circles . I would recommend joining CoPs, such as those we have here at IUP, or others faculty may find that ar...

   Creating a engaging/support plan is very challenging. I have included a sample Social Media Support Plan . I have come to understand just how important it is to work with an Instructional Designer. The treasure of information they can share/offer for assistance is staggering.  Not only helping to make sure that the goals and objects are aligned but also knowing sharing information on the wealth of university recourse available. They are also well versed in most if not all of the university faculty services offered by their university. I am finding more and more just how important is to know the difference between social media and programs that augment assignments. The article,  “ 50 Education Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About “ (GDC Team, 2015) has been extremely helpful. I am also learning how to use these programs not only from the “How to” perspective but also to foster learning and engage students. I thought I understood lar...

 Designing learning incorporating social media is extremely challenging.  You really have to understand the separation of social media tools from tools that just enhance learning. I pursued this challenge to see what all it encompassed.  I have included my  Learning Design Plan  in detail. First I determined what course to use it with, audience, course description, and type: Course Name : How to Construct a Basic D2L Course Course Description : The How to Construct a Basic D2L Course is designed to provide participants with an overview to the tools facilitators may use to build a D2L online course. In this introductory course, we will focus on understanding how the D2L tools work as well as some basic pedagogical use of an educational and social media tool. Audience : Full/Temp Faculty, Staff, Ph.D. and Graduate Students Course Type : Facilitator Lead Online Course Researching I choose a combination of university-related social media tools and one non-universit...

 I had only heard about curation tools with in the last year. I thought it might be good way to collect information at articles I was interested in instead of collecting a bunch of bookmarks.  So I choose to try a curation tool.  Because I wanted to categorize my information I choose Diigo   Below are the links to my research topic on eLearning. Pedagogy, Technology, and the Example of Open Educational Resources Using Facebook in the Classroom Digital Formative Assessments! Decade of Education Research Tells Us About Technology with Underserved Students Ditch That Textbook   That said I am not sure that curation tools are worth the effort. Diigo says you can learn it in 5 mins.  Hah! I am a well-educated person and I found it a confusing and time consuming to learn.  Our faculty are pressed for time. I am not convinced these tools will help them manage the search for content. The annotation itself does not seem to match what most annotated bibliog...

 I have used a few tools for my projects.  When I created these I was doing different responsibilities, some of which will continue in my new Instructional Design position.  Others may or will not. I say this for you to understand with the purpose was behind these projects. I have experience with the tools PowToons, StudyMate, Tellagami.   I would say that I have a tie for my favorite. One is Tellagami.  Telligami fun. I have not tried it but I believe it would be appropriate for students to learn by creating. I believe it would also be useful for instructors and students to use Tellagami® to create book reports, solve math problems and recite lessons. It has short comings, such as getting it to work in D2L, or getting the character to say where you put it, and you cannot get back to the gami when once posted online except to make minor text changes.  If you use it for specific purposes, it can be useful.  The product currently is compatible with iPhon...

  Lately, I have been learning about Communities of Practice (CoP).  Wenger defines a  community of practice as a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. This definition reflects the fundamentally social nature of human learning. I am experiencing a level of collaboration and learning not known. Working with the participants in Online Learning Consortium course for Professional Foundations and the ID2ID CoP for Instructional Designers are fantastic Sharing information in such groups has influenced ideas I have regarding Instructional Design. Working with my colleagues in the OLC course helps me to understand learning theories much better and their importance as well as how to use them in course design.  For example, the importance of using concept maps to visually document learning theories as it applies to effective instruction. The ID2ID program helps me answer questions facul...