EDET674 Virtual Teaching and Learning Week 5

Week 5 Blog Virtual Teaching and Learning

Essential Question: How do instructional design stages help us understand online teaching?

            The ADDIE instructional course design model helps a designer to create a course that is efficient for the students and instructors involved. ADDIE stands for the stages that must be taken to create thus course and the stages are analysis, design, develop, implement, and evaluate. Most instructional design models are structured like the ADDIE model and this is because it works. Instructional design can be done alone (not suggested), in an author-editor model, or in a course team model. Moore and Kearsley explains the pros and cons of each model. They explain that “the author-editor model is a great deal cheaper than a course team, and it results in relatively quick development and modification of courses.” Also that, “The greater wealth of knowledge and experience in the course team results in course materials that are superior” but the model is much more expensive and requires lots of time to develop. (2012)

            While looking at MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), Anders brings up some valid points how the design of the courses need to be a hybrid course between the following main models of content-based and network-based. The effective hybrid course is community and task-based that has guided, social learning activities. (2015) For example, “If you only do one thing…” is an assignment that helps focus and streamline activities for engaging and promoting learning for the students. Hybrid MOOCs also promote many educational methods to adhere to all types of learning styles for students to feel connected to the community of learning. Anders summarizes hybrid MOOCs as “supportive environments in which participants develop the experience and confidence necessary to be successful in more open and distributed learning contexts.” (2015)

            To help discover and analyze what designs are best for student growth and learning, I have taken a look at research about the weaknesses of courses that are from a box so that I know not to apply this to my future courses. In this article we see that courses that weren’t made by the instructor or the instructor was not a part of the designing were ineffective. (2015, Course) Teachers felt like they could not change the course even by a little bit to benefit the students’ learning styles and even the teachers’ teaching styles. This brings a very obvious point that can be looked over out of ease. If a course is pre-made, give the instructor full reign on changing the course to support the students and create collaborative learning environments.

Anders, A. (2015). Theories and Applications of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs): The Case for Hybrid Design.International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning, 16(6), 39-61.

The Course-in-a-box Design Issues. (2015). TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, 59(4), 71-77.

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2012). Distance Education: A system view of online learning. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.