Personal Application Paper - EDIT6400

One of my favorite courses I took in the IDD program was EDIT6400. It reminded me of my Education Psychology class I took during undergrad (which I loved as well) but on a more advanced level. The basis of the course is largely focused on learning theories. At the end of the semester, Dr. Knapp asked us to summarize three main concepts we learned in the course and how we anticipate applying those concepts to our work. The three concepts I chose to highlight were Design Thinking, Cognitive Apprenticeship, and Motivation. I am including this paper in my portfolio because I believe it exemplifies the notion that all good instruction is rooted in theory - both instructional design theory and in learning theories and concepts. These theories are the foundation which we build upon, and without a strong foundation, the rest of a project is unstable. This paper is really important to me because it marks the first time in the program (and probably ever) where I was able to translate how a learning theory or concept could be applied to work that I was actually doing at the time. All of the concepts mentioned truly had immediate application to my work. I really enjoyed writing this paper as well. I distinctly remember writing ideas for this paper using Google Docs on my phone as I was sitting in a repair shop while the windshield was being replaced on my car. Despite this being from my first semester in the program, I am actually pretty happy with its contents. If I were to make any edits to this paper, I’d add even more ways that I could address the three topics I chose in my work. There really were several things I could have highlighted, but I decided to only detail one or two per concept.

Personal Application Paper - EDIT6400

Paradigms Paper - EDIT6100

I took EDIT6100 in the Fall of 2017. The culminating paper for this course asked us to detail the three major schools of thought relative to learning, Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. We were also asked to summarize the implications these schools had on instruction. I am including this paper under the “Foundations” portion of FADDIE because I believe fostering learning is really at the core of what we do as instructional designers. We need to be able to understand the very nature of learning which is the topic that each of these schools of thought seeks to define. Everything we build should be based upon our understanding of how people learn and the best methods for delivering content so that learning can take place. This paper made me think about how our understanding of learning has sophisticated over time. I think there’s probably still more to uncover. As technology advances, I think learners’ methods of knowledge acquisition morph and assimilate to the differing technological environments of the time. The version of the paper linked below is actually the version that was corrected after Dr. Clinton’s feedback. While I did score well on the paper, there were a few concepts that I clearly misunderstood and needed to correct. For example, I had thought that Lev Vygotsky originally described the concept of “Scaffolding” when it was actually Jerome Bruner. I also had described reinforcement incorrectly when writing about Operant Conditioning.

Paradigms Paper - EDIT6100

Needs Assessment - EDIT6200

The company I work for started serving a new K-5 client, Polk Innovative Learning Academy in the Fall of 2018. Early on, one of their critiques of our courses was that the social studies courses didn’t address state standards specific to Tennessee history. I was taking EDIT6200 at the time and wanted to create some content for their kindergarteners to address this as my project for the semester. Therefore, I took the feedback they had given me and created a needs assessment to determine if students already knew the standard based on previous experiences or if further instruction needed to be developed. I am including the needs assessment from this project because I feel it shows a great deal of analysis of the situation. It helped me further determine if more instruction was needed to meet the standard identified rather than solely basing my identification of a need on the opinions of others. This project, in particular, was probably the most difficult for me of the entire program. My teaching experience is with gifted high school students and college students. I had no experience with elementary-aged students whatsoever. Therefore, I had to work very hard and do some research to formulate effective questions for my assessment tool (a survey sent to a group of students). This was definitely an eye-opening experience for me. Looking back, what I would have done differently would be to consult with a peer or other professional about creating assessments for this age group. My lack of experience really hindered me here. While I did “get it done,” I feel like I could have done a better job and could have drawn more detailed insights if I had consulted with someone more familiar with the age group than myself.

Needs Assessment - EDIT6200

Treatment Rationale, Development Model, and Instructional Model - EDIT6210

In EDIT6210 during the Spring of 2019, I was on a team tasked with creating training for work-study employees at Athens Technical College. I was the main graphic designer on the team, and among my duties was creating the treatment rationale for the training. Though we determined the development model and instructional model as a team, I also wrote the rationales for these as well. These rationales were combined into one document, and this is one of the artifacts I’d like to highlight for the Design phase. I am including this artifact because it represents several design decisions made by my team and I relative to our module. This document specifically outlines the development model (the Successive Approximation Model), instructional model (Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction), and treatment we chose for our module and why determined each to be the most effective and appropriate. This document is important to me because it represents the first time I developed for a client with whom I was not familiar and who did not have a style guide. I was the person who developed the color scheme, theme, general layouts, fonts, etc. for the training. The treatment and the treatment rationale were almost if not entirely my work. I am also very proud of the instructional and development rationales and think they represent strong and sound decisions as well. If there was one thing I would change about the module, I think that I would embed more animation as part of the design. Animation is used, but only in two instances of the training. I think that would greatly strengthen the learning experience for the users if more was embedded. It might capture the learner's attention a bit better than what is currently in place. I consider the instructional and development models in this project to be very appropriate.

Treatment Rationale, Development Model, and Instructional Model - EDIT6210

Public Service Announcement Storyboard - EDIT6500

I took EDIT6500 in the Summer of 2018. One of our assignments was to create a Public Service Announcement video. I chose to focus my video on the importance of using sunscreen in the Summer. I am including this artifact because it displays the deliberate design decisions I made in planning out the video. The shot description (long shot, close-up, medium shot, etc.), transitions, the type of shot (action shot, shot with on-screen text, etc.), the audio, the action, the location, and a sketch of the shot are identified for each individual scene in the video. Each scene was planned and designed before they were shot. To me, this artifact represents is of my first experiences with storyboarding a video. Previously, I hadn’t made very many videos, and I definitely didn’t plan them out to the degree that I did with this one. Looking back on this, I don’t like the flow of it so much. To me, the scenes seem disjointed. If I were to recreate this, I would definitely correct this and possibly change the transitions. Each transition was fade to black. I now prefer to crossfade with videos.

Public Service Announcement Storyboard - EDIT6500

Storyteller Training - EDIT7550

Learning Ally is a non-profit group who creates audiobooks versions of textbooks and literature for learners with disabilities such as dyslexia. These audiobooks are created by volunteers so that they can be offered to students free of charge. In EDIT7550, I was in a group with three other ladies tasked with creating a module for Learning Ally’s Storyteller Course, a course that teaches volunteers how to record literary audiobooks. I created one of the four lessons of this module myself. I was given a style guide and some suggested stock images with which to work. I designed and developed one prototype. The client mentioned that they were worried about the prototype as their previous lessons and modules used Vyond, an animation tool, pretty heavily. However, I did not have access to this tool on my own and could not develop in it. The client decided to let me utilize one of their logins to use the tool, and I created the bulk of the assets for this lesson in Vyond and embedded them in Storyline. This lesson is important to me because it represents the first time I had ever used Vyond. I had to learn the tool very quickly to meet the client’s expectations. As a designer, I think it’s important to be willing to learn different tools or methods. Some designs may require secondary softwares or programs to create the end-product that the client is looking for. That was certainly the case with this project. If there is one thing I would have done differently, it would be to ask the client more in-depth questions and have them explain their expectations more clearly. Even though I did have stock images, a style guide and approval of the first design, I had to scrap that prototype because the client decided they wanted animation. I did, however, appreciate the opportunity to learn the new tool!

Storyteller Training - EDIT7550

Paradise Lost: A Climate Change Story - EDIT6190

I took my first EDIT6190 course in the Spring of 2018. In this course, we were allowed to develop a module around any topic of our choosing and were not required to work with a specific client. I decided on a topic I was passionate about, Climate Change. This represents my first development in Storyline in the program. I think it’s interesting to look back at earlier projects and see how I progressed throughout the program. EDIT6190 also gave me my first bit of formal training in Storyline. Before taking it, I knew just enough to make myself dangerous in the platform. I tried to embed some of the more advanced Storyline techniques I had learned in this project. This included variables, state changes, additional layers, and other capabilities which I had never used in Storyline before. I also created a video using Adobe Premiere Pro and embedded it in Storyline. This was one of my first experiences using Premiere Pro as well. I like learning new tools, so this was, quite frankly, a really fun project for me. There are several things I would go back and change in this module if it were ever implemented. First, the course contains a main menu where students can select which topic they’d like to view first, second, third, and last. The slide has audio to walk learners through each of the choices. After a student completes a certain lesson, they return back to the main menu where the choice for the completed lesson is greyed out. The same audio plays that the first time they access the slide also plays every time they return to that slide. I would alter this so that the audio only plays the first time the slide is accessed. Also, several of the slides contain a seekbar when one is not needed or the seekbar continues far past the point where audio or animation end. Last, there is a slide which contains a concept web. When learners click on certain hotspots in this web, audio plays. However, I did not enter triggers to pause the audio if the learner clicked on a different hotspot, so it’s possible for all audio tracks to play simultaneously. This needs to be corrected as well.

Paradise Lost: A Climate Change Story - EDIT6190

New Student Orientation - EDIT6190

In the Summer of 2018, I developed a module in EDIT6900? for the company where I work. This was a New Student Orientation to be embedded in asynchronous online courses for K-12 students. The idea was to introduce them to the overarching rules and procedures of the program as well as familiarize them with the learning management system (LMS) and the layout of their courses. The module was to be embedded at the very beginning of each course my company offers and followed up with a review quiz that learners must make a 100 on before they can move onto the actual course content. I am including this module under the Implementation phase because it is, without a doubt, the most heavily utilized module that I have ever created. It has now been in use for 3 semesters and has been accessed by at least 2,000 individual users. Also, I am continuously revising this module. As new features come to our LMS and as policies change, updates must be made to this module. So, I must publish, upload, and maintain it on a regular basis. This module is really significant to me because of the context. My company had an orientation module already in our courses, however, we were still getting a ton of questions from students about things that were covered in that orientation. Therefore, I knew something needed to be done, and I knew the implementation would need to be seen less as we transitioned from one orientation to this new one. I had to be really deliberate about choosing when to launch the module, which courses it needed to be embedded in first, etc. Also with regard to the implementation of this module, I wish I could identify a user-friendly way to give the students access the module and the quiz outside the learning management system. To get to the module right now, students have to successfully login, open the course in the LMS, and click on the appropriate activity. There’s a lot of opportunities for students to struggle in those steps. Our tech support lines often get calls from students who can’t even figure out how to log in. So, I really wish there was an alternative way of delivering this that allowed students to do both the module and the quiz. The module could be sent via a link, but I’m not sure that’s the most effective option. The quiz itself is built within the LMS. This is the main thing with which I struggle with regard to this module.

New Student Orientation - EDIT6190

Role of Evaluation in Instructional Design Paper- EDIT7350

Both of my artifacts from the Evaluation phase are from my EDIT7350 class, taken in the Spring of 2019. The first is my final individual paper for the course highlighting the role of evaluation in instructional design. This is largely an opinion/reflection piece. It outlines my previous experience with evaluation, my definition of evaluation tailored to my professional context, and the skills I believe are critical for completing an effective evaluation. I am including this paper because it helps provide a context for how I approach evaluative situations.I really enjoyed my evaluation course and found it to be extremely helpful for projects I was working on at the time. This course helped provide a solid foundation in evaluation, and this document is a reflection of my new knowledge. I am still new to evaluation, and my ideas regarding the practice are bound to evolve further as I become more experienced. I am grateful to have this document to look back on in the future. If I were to revise this paper, I would embed more references to support my opinions. I did try to do this throughout, but I feel I could have done more to strengthen my arguments.

Role of Evaluation in Instructional Design Paper- EDIT7350

Final Evaluation Report - EDIT7350

My second artifact for the Evaluation phase is the Final Evaluation Report for my group's project in EDIT7350. This report details an evaluation we performed on a Career Explorations pilot program created and implemented by Village Virtual, the company for which I work. My group and I reviewed the course content, data collected from the fall implementation of the Career Explorations pilot, and gathered and analyzed our own data from the spring implementation of the Career Explorations pilot. This represents the first organized evaluation I ever completed from an instructional design standpoint. It outlines the stakeholders, evaluation questions to be answered, and other methods. This is the best representation I have of a complete evaluation that I implemented. This is paper is significant to me because I did take a leadership role with regard to the evaluation of this program since I’m employed for the client. This placed me in an interesting position as well. I had to consistently manage my biases and remind myself to approach the situation in an objective manner (especially since the course in question was one I actually developed). If I were to continue or expand this evaluation, I would try to conduct more interviews with stakeholders. This was not really an option at the time that this evaluation was completed as schools were very busy, and we found it very difficult to find a convenient time to interview administrators and teachers. Therefore, we had to rely heavily on surveys. I think these interviews might provide additional insights as individuals usually have to answer the questions on the spot. They really don’t have adequate time to craft a response, so their answers may be more genuine than if they responded to an online survey.

Final Evaluation Report - EDIT7350