I am unable to explain why
my mental picture of instructional design was that of a solitary task. The designer would have an insular existence
while going through the design and development process. Connecting with others only to conduct
research, or to review a final learning design with a training group. However, I no longer hold that view, and the
course EDU 654 Method for Online Teaching & Learning is the reason I now
consider the instructional design process as a true collaborative effort.
It is that collaboration
that fed the successful outcome for the partnership project. My community grew by one with Shelby as my
partner, and then by four when the rest of the class joined in for discussion
that always resulted in me learning something new. The free offering of different course design
and teaching as it related to peer reviewed literature ignited my creative
juices leaving me excited about the thought of what I could incorporate in my
course design. In that collaborative
community I learned about so many learning applications that offered flexible
interaction for any student demographic such as VoiceThread and Vacaroo.
A frame game like Bingo
can be designed around key words in an organizational plan, and played by
attendees to the meeting as they are intensely focused on hearing those key words
in the senior leaderships call to action speech. I can easily see including simulations in the
online sexual harassment training, and to keep what is clearly a team shared
effort moving forward I plan on trying the project management tool Asana to
best manage the work and keep the team members on task.
Following graduation, I
will definitely take a break from classroom learning for several months. Then to
stay at the top of my professional game I will periodically attend
instructional design learning workshops.
I will conduct internet searches for the latest learning applications,
and develop a network of other instructional designers/trainers to make myself
aware of effective best practice efforts.
Completion of this course, or even graduation from a program does not
mean the learning stops for it is only the beginning of the endless quest to expand
my knowledge of online teaching and learning methods.
