July 01, 2004

COURSE DESIGN: Instructional Strategies

chess.jpgOnce you've waded through the course analysis tasks and defined your learning objectives, it's time to get creative! Designing instructional strategies is at the heart of the instructional designer's job -- in fact, it's right there in the job title. This is where you get to apply your theories about learning in concrete and (one hopes) measurable ways in designing interactions that your learners will respond to.

At this stage of course development, the focus on specific media should be at a fairly high level... you want to be mindful of the kind of learning interactions that are possible in your environment (in terms of communication tools, simulations, testing, etc.) so that you can be sure that you can achieve the learning outcomes stated in your objectives. (For example, you obviously can't have "group discussion" in a self-instructional course unless you also have access to a forum, synchronous classroom, blog, or other collaborative space!)

It's important for the learning - not the technology - to be in the driver's seat, however. While technology does limit some of what you can achieve in your course, with some thought and creativity, you can create engaging learning experiences even in fairly low-tech learning environments.

Stop and Reassess
Before you move on to more complex design and development tasks, it's a good idea to stop at this point and reassess your analysis findings and overall course goals. Ask yourself whether you can really achieve what you want to, given your resources, audience, and technology.

The time to make any significant changes to your overall course goals and purpose is now, before you've expended time, energy, and resources on creating content, designing interactive elements and graphics, or investing in specific technologies.

Posted by Joanne Tzanis at July 1, 2004 02:38 PM
Comments

Thanks, James... and thanks for the plug on your site!

Posted by: Joanne at July 2, 2004 03:53 AM

Nice site... thanks for the blogroll mention :o)

Welcome to the blogosphere!

Cheers, James

Posted by: James Farmer at July 1, 2004 11:13 PM