Instructional Design – Silence and Voice

Workplace (Professional) Learning: Factors & Considerations (Decision Support Tool)

** This image file was slightly revised and updated on 8/4/16. It is now titled: Professional Learning: Factors & Considerations Before Selecting a Learning Strategy.

I wanted to share my revised version of the Workplace Learning: Factors & Considerations Before Selecting a Learning Strategy Decision Support Tool I developed to help frame questions and organizational considerations before selecting a learning strategy. It is easy to determine we need eLearning or a MOOC or video-based training before conducting an organizational environmental scan (related to a learner gap analysis, but different in that it considers and focuses on organizational strategies and other factors that will ultimately determine the direction learning in the workplace will take. This was created to start conversations early in the process, and while Continue reading “Workplace (Professional) Learning: Factors & Considerations (Decision Support Tool)“

Workplace Learning Factors & Considerations

DRAFT Workplace Learning Factors 071016v4

I have a task request in my professional work (I work in Training and Knowledge Management), and have been wracking my mind as to how to approach this, that I am at the point I need to get some feedback. Would love some thoughts on this if anybody is so inclined.

There was a request to provide an overview of learning options we can select related to a potential need to develop a learning community. Rather straight-forward, though each time I looked at the breadth of options for this, other options and considerations arose. For example, the notion of build it and they will come is only a nice notion, though those of us who work in workplace learning know it is not quite that simple. In fact, there are so many considerations related to this that thinking about the end result (threaded discussion like a Discourse install, an open, collaborative, knowledge-building learning and sharing experience like CLMOOC, or even through the structured Canvas elements for something like the #HumanMOOC) is premature without considering. Why even daydream about a large system if there is little budget, or consider a mooc if there is not staffing to support it?

Thus, my dilemma. How can I speak Continue reading “Workplace Learning Factors & Considerations“

Constructivistic Instructional Design

A colleague of mine, Catherine, had a wonderful blog post this week entitled ADDIE Deconstructed, which is somewhat related with my own recent posting on this topic, and is nicely juxtaposed with the work my students are doing with my online PPOCCID course.

This area around ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate), which is an instructional design model I use all the time, constantly reminds me of issues of power and positionality that arise when we determine how others have to learn this or that. In many ways, this reminds me of a blog post that really stopped me to think about these issues, Why you want to focus on actions, not learning objectives. For those of us in the learning field, it is easy to either get so wrapped up in learning objectives that we neglect the learners as people, or to get so vague with our objectives that we can never really measure (or determine) if anything is learned at all.

All of this consideration of whose objectives we have to consider, and how that balance works within organizational dynamics, leads me to the text that Catherine pointed out and I just ordered, Constructivist Instructional Design (C-ID). This looks like just the right text to help consider some of these issues around ADDIE, which increasingly seems to be a simple model with grate implications.

More to follow . . .

A as in ADDIE

I asked my students in my a PPOCCID class to do some searching for online references / discussions about the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) instructional design model. I find this model very useful in many applications (especially in project management of learning initiatives), though have recently been more intrigued with the A as in Addie.

What does it mean to Analyze the needs of the audience? Well, I have to make sure this is a need the training or learning or education or development can address. Who needs to learn what? Why do they need to learn this? What are the obstacles? Who are the proponents of this (often these are not the learners)? What do they want (and why)? Are the goals the learners have (if they even have any, and if they can be articulated) and the goals of the proponents of the learning the same (or at least close enough that they are not opposed)?

What roles does this power play, especially within organizational dynamics? Can what works for one be transferable to others? Have you ever found it is easier to analyze the needs of others rather than ourselves? Always more questions than answers; while this can be frustrating at times, I find this endless interest quite enlivening and engaging!

I suppose I am considering these issues right now as I am beginning a Module 3 in my doctoral program at Lancaster University. Nice how various parts of my professional, academic, and personal elements of my life tend to fit together from time to time!

PPOCCID Online Class Began Tonight

My new online class, Principles and Practices of Online Course Creation and Instructional Design (#PPOCCID) at NYU’s SCPS, began this evening. I am glad to see that there have been some nice improvements to the Epsilen online class platform:

As I am asking my students to blog over our 8 weeks together, I thought I should continue to do the same (and as I have been so busy at work and with food poisoning and a paper to complete as well), I am far-enough behind in my sharing here that I have a lot to say!