Basic Issues and Guidelines of Instructional Design

When you are preparing a learning material, following are the basic things to keep in view:

•        Audience Analysis: Determine the current ability of the learners

•        Method of teaching& Media Selection

•        Topic & Objective of learning

•        Introduction and commencement

•        Recollection and assessment of prior knowledge

•        Break down topic into smaller subtopics

•        Subject Presentation: Examples/Scenarios, Language and Style,

•        Assessment

•        Feedback

Audience Analysis: When you are writing something, you must know for whom you are writing.  You have to prepare the content, keeping in view your audience.  Audience analysis includes various things some of which are mentioned below:

• Age
• Educational Qualification
• Region & Native language
• Familiarity with the language of instruction
• Prior knowledge of subject  

Points to remember:

Ø      In some instances, the language of instruction may not be the native language of the audience.  Hence, do not use idioms popular among the native speakers.  Otherwise, the audience may not follow the instruction or may take some other meaning.

Ø      In Technical writing as well as instructional designing, the usage of idioms is highly discouraged.

Method and Medium of teaching: The writer should know the medium and method of communications as he is supposed to prepare his content for various mediums such as textbook, e-book, audiocassette, videocassette, and website.

Topic & Objective of learning:  It is the duty of an instructional designer to enable audience to know what and what for they are learning all about.

Introduction and commencement: After explaining Objective of Learning, give a brief introduction.  Commence your topic with either an interesting illustration or a though provoking question.

Recollection and assessment of prior knowledge: Make your readers to recollect his prior knowledge and assess themselves about how far they are acquainted with the topic.  To get the desired results, ask them thought provoking questions and make them to think of the topic.

Break down topic into smaller subtopics: Break down main topic into smaller sub-topics.

Presentation with examples: After breaking down main topic into smaller sub-topics, explain each sub-topic in detail with illustrations and examples.

FAQ’s: After the completion of a task, mention FAQs. It enables the audience to understand the topic in more effective and detailed manner.  While preparing FAQs, stress more on misconceptions and prepare questions related to misconceptions.

Assessment and Feedback: After the completion of topic, enable the readers to assess themselves by providing various exercises.  Also provide them with feedback by providing them with answers for given questions.  Assessment helps the reader to know his level of understanding and builds confidence among readers.  As a part of assessment, stress more on misconceptions.

You can assess your reader with following types of Assessment:

•        Short Answer Question

•        Fill-in-the-blanks

•        Multiple Choice

•        Match

•        Sequence

•        Open ended

•        Simulation

Self evaluation: Motivate your audience to have timely self evaluation after the completion of every topic.   

Guidelines to Instructional Designers:

• Follow Learners’ Centric Approach
• Clarification of Misconceptions
• Usage of idioms

Follow Learners’ Centric Approach: In olden days, teaching used to teachers’ centric.  In course of time, educationalists realized the importance of making it learners’ centric.  Encourage the engagement of learners so that they learn with an enthusiasm.

When you prepare content for either training or educational purpose, follow the learner’s centric approach. 

Ø      Make them involved in the learning process by asking them frequent questions related to the subject. Give a list of questions after the completion of every topic in order to enable the learners to assess themselves.  

Ø      Ask them their personal experiences related to the concept.  For example, if you are teaching about the concept ‘Inflation’, ask them to remember the prices of various day-to-day commodities when they were children.

Clarification of Misconceptions:  When you are supposed to conduct a training or educational program on a particular concept, you must know the misconceptions your audience had about the concept. While explaining about the concept, you must stress more up on misconceptions.  You also mention them in FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

While assessing the prior as well as acquired knowledge of your audience, observe how far they are away from misconceptions by asking more number of and challenging questions on misconceptions.

Usage of Idioms: Usually, idioms make text live and readable. However, it is not advisable for instructional designers to use idioms.  Idioms are usually popular among the native speakers.  In some instances, the language of instruction may not be the native language of the audience and audience may not follow the instruction or may take some other meaning. Hence, the usage of idioms is highly discouraged.

   
Note: Same thing is applicable to technical writing too)  

Written by: S.Chandrashekara Reddy

Mail ID: chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com

Graph Phobia – Its causes and guidelines to overcome it

Graph phobia is an unusual fear of writing or handwriting.  It is usually found among students, semi-literates, those who do not enjoy good command over language, and those who were de-motivated to write due to several other reasons.

Reasons for Graph Phobia: There are several reasons for graph phobia as mentioned below.  

• Bad Hand Writing: Some may fear or feel shameful to show others their bad handwriting.
• Bad Grammar and Spelling Mistakes: Some may not have good command over the language and may fear of committing spelling and grammatical mistakes.  Such people get naturally de-motivated to let others know their linguistic and writing inabilities.
• Lack of Subject Knowledge: It is quite natural that people feel tense to write about topics with which they are not much acquainted.   
• Fear of lower grade: Some may fear to attend a test or competition with a fear of getting lower grades.  Sometimes, if a person keeps on getting lower grades continuously over a period of time, he/she may hesitate and even fear to face a test or competition.  Such kind of fear is usually found among students.
• Gap between Thinking & Writing Process: Some may feel frustrated while writing as their writing or typing speed is not par with the speed of their thought process.  Such gap may frustrate the writer and may de-motivate the writer not to write anything in future.

Take the help of computers as most children can type long before they can handwrite at any satisfactory speed.  Elementary students who show any writing phobia should not be given graded assignments in writing. Writing should become a fun activity.

How to come out of Graph Phobia:

Following are some of the guidelines to come out of Graph Phobia: 

• If your bad handwriting is the cause of your phobia, do not write anything by your hand but use a computer to write something.  Moreover, you join some hand writing training sessions in order to improve your handwriting.
• If you are de-motivated due to the spellings and grammar mistakes that may occur in your writing, do not write on a paper, but instead type your content in Ms-Word file.  The Ms-Word file displays the spelling mistakes with green lines and grammar mistakes with red lines.  It even suggests correct spellings and correct grammatical versions of the wrong sentences. Thus, it helps you to cover-up and overcome your linguistic inabilities. You can also take the help of free grammar and spell checkers that are available online.

(However, this suggestion has some limitations too as Ms-Word supports only English)

• If you are de-motivated due to the spellings and grammar mistakes that may occur in your writing, try to get your writings edited by a language expert or at least a friend.  You too put efforts personally to improve your language.
• If lack of subject awareness is the cause of your phobia, try to improve your knowledge about the concerned issue about which you are supposed to write.  Internet is the best option to know about various unknown concepts time to time.
•    
• While attending tests or writing competitions, stop bothering about grades.  Do your best in the tests and writing competitions and always remember that “You are concerned with work but not with result”.  You perform root cause analysis and try to identify the factor that is causing you to get lower grade and rectify the error.
• Some writers often feel frustrated while writing as their writing or typing speed is not par with the speed of their thought process.  Such frustration may de-motivate the writer to write something. If you face such situation, prefer typing instead of writing hand.  Try to improve your typing speed by learning typing/DTP techniques. Practice DTP for at least half an hour a day.
• Practice free writing technique.  Some psychologists and counselors suggest as the best exercise for curing Graph Phobia.

(Do you want to know about Free Writing, visit: http://csrkingdom.blogspot.com/2011/04/free-writing-introduction.html) 

Contact: S. Chandrashekara Reddy

Mail Id: chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com

Miscellaneous Issues to be remembered by Content Writers

• There is no plural form for Software.  Instead of softwares, you use software tools or software applications.
• Whenever you want to write about Google search engine, write down – Google but not google.
• Whenever you want to mention a date use name of the month rather than number.  For example, instead of writing 11-3-2011, it advisable to write 11^th March, 2011 or March 11^th, 2011. If mention the date as 1-12-2011, the reader may be confused whether it is 1^st December, 2011 or 12^th January, 2011 because while mentioning dates, some writers follow dd-mm-yy method and others follow mm-dd-yy method.

Introduction to Instructional Design

Introduction: Instructional design is a scientific and systematic approach used to design material for learning in order to make an educational or training program more effective, systematic, and consistent.  They prepare materials such as textbooks, workbooks, guides, study material and question banks in order help the learners to learn in an effective manner.

History: The subject “Instructional Design” became more popular during World War II when the U.S. military was supposed to train large numbers of people to perform complex technical tasks.  To explain them about complex tasks in a simple manner, the trainers used to break the tasks into sub-tasks and used to treat each subtask as a separate learning goal.

The trainers got very good results with their approach of splitting a task into different subtasks and training the soldiers in each different task with the help of simple instructions.  After the war, the trainers started implementing the same strategy in business and industrial sectors.  They also implemented the strategy to an extent in the primary and secondary education.  Later, educationalists propounded several learning theories in order to make it easy for learners to learn in an easy and most effective manner.

Instructional Design Strategies

Types of Instructional Strategies

•        Macro Strategies

•        Micro Strategies (information presentation-level)

•        Assessment Strategies

Macro Strategies: These strategies deal with course level issues such as structure of course and syllabus.

Micro Strategies: These strategies deal with presentation level issues such as method, medium, and style of presentation.

Assessment Strategies: Assessment strategies deal with the assessment issues. Assessments are of various types such as assessment of prior knowledge, assessment of learnt knowledge, and assessment of performance.

Stasis Questions

Tagmemics

•         Writing lab: HEAV 226, Purdue University

•         On-line writing lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu

•          Email: owl@owl.english.purdue.edu

Keep one idea to one paragraph

–        Begin transition into a new idea, belongs in a new paragraph.

Listings:  Chronological Simple to complex General to specification

• Region & Native language
• Familiarity with the language of instruction

Miscellaneous Concepts related to Instructional Design

•         Collection of content

•         Bloom’s Taxonomy

•         Information Mapping

•         To motivate and build confidence

•         Cognitive Load

•         Mind Mapping

•         Expository

•         Exploratory

•         Progressive display

•         Analogy/Metaphor

•         Simulation

•         Use intro animation

•         Use pictorial elements, such as maps, graphics, pictures, tables

•         Outline content

•         Provide graphic overviews/

•         Explain purpose or relevance

•         Generate analogies and examples

•         Pedagogic techniques

•         Andragogical techniques

•         cognitive and behavioral psychology.

•         Guidelines – Instructions –Clustering