Session 2

What is Instructional Design and why do we do it? Go beyond what the book says in your answer.

Instructional design is the process to help create effective trainings in an efficient way. This process helps the designer to ask the right questions, make the right choices, and produce a useful product. This process helps the designer to discover the best way to solve the situation at hand, which is usually through different types of trainings. The some of the different types of trainings are classroom trainings, on-the-job trainings, self-instructions, and technology based trainings. The reason we use instructional design is to create the most effective and efficient training to produce the best results.

Examine any of the instructional design models we have looked at in this session (Dick and Carey, Seels and Glasgow, Rapid Prototyping etc.) and compare it to the ADDIE model. List some of the similarities and differences between your model and the ADDIE model. Explain the advantages and disadvantage of each model.

Seels and Glasgow model- This model shows that there are more than one thing happening at some point through the process of instructional design. For example, while the task and instructional analysis is being done, simultaneously the objective and tests are being developed.

ADDIE model- This stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. This is the generic model for Instructional Design. This model states that each of these item happen in this order, but the disadvantage to this model is that fact that it doesn't show integration and digression within the process. One example is if the designer went through the analysis and design of the training, but then discovered something about their audiences so they had to go back to analysis to find how best to reach their audiences.

Describe either "Performance Gap Assessment" or "Performance Opportunity Assessment". Now explain how you would use the method you have just described in a development project that you might actually undertake. Be sure to explain methods that you would use in your assessment.

Performance Gap Assessment- It is an assessment that examines how the performance should be and what it is now. This assists designers with discovering the problem and finding the best solution to solve it. The process has the following steps: identify the problem, analyze the tasks and conditions of the job, analyze the current performance levels, identify the causes of the problem, identify the desired performance outcome, identify the expectations of your training as related to the outcome.

A project I am planning to implement involves teacher training of technology available to the teachers. This means I plan to identify the technology the teachers have access to, assess their knowledge of the technology, survey the teachers feelings about technology and trainings, and create trainings to fit increase knowledge of the technology.

Explain Cost Benefit Analysis. Why is it we rarely see such analysis in education training?

Basically cost benefit analysis is a strategy to figure out the cost and benefits of designing and implementing a training. This includes costs like salary, benefits cost, lost production, program development, time, and hard costs. Also this helps to show benefits of the trainings.

The reason we rarely see such analysis in education training because basically they are worried about teaching the teachers what "they" believe they need to know, instead of researching and analyzing what the teachers actually need training on. For example, teacher trainings are usually based on how the students' scored on the standardized tests. If overall the district did not do well in math, then all teachers are required to attend math trainings. Not to mention these trainings are created fast and not geared to it's audiences. They teach math k-6 in one class, but doesn't realize teaching math in k-2 is different then teaching math in the grades of 3-6. They are more interested in quantity then quality. They want to teach more teachers at one time, then to teach to the grade level of the teachers. This is one of the many complaints I have heard from the teachers.

What is the relationship between Learning Theory and Instructional Design?

The learning theory is the way someone looks at a situation or learns and this is a part of instructional design. When designing a training one step of a good design is considering how the target group learns.