Thursday, February 17, 2005

IEEE Reference Guide for Instructional Design and Development This is a well-organized, well-written introduction to standard ID concepts, with many useful reference links. The Guide is organized into six basic sections: Assessing Needs, Analyzing Learners, Writing Learning Objectives, Selecting an Instructional Strategy, Developing Materials, and Evaluating Instruction. The authors make clear that movement through the steps is not always linear and that not every step is applied to every development project. Notice that the authors do not include finding/examining/constructing LOs as an essential step in Instructional Design, a regretable omission; nor do they  include references to LORs. (They do reference SCORM and the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative.) The materials were prepared by the Educational Activities Board of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. "Instructional design is the process through which an educator determines the best teaching methods for specific learners in a specific context, attempting to obtain a specific goal. This reference guide is designed to help you apply sound principles of design to the creation of your courses." The resource is available as a pdf file and in html. I have problems whenever a formulation such as this one is applied rigidly to the tasks of teaching and course design, but I do appreciate the clarity of this work. The Guide provides an overview from which teachers can jump off in their own directions according to their own judgements about the subject and the learners. ___JH (I first saw this resource in Stephen Downes' Edu_RSS feeds.) 9:50:24 AM    COMMENT []