Comprehensive Instructional Design Plan Jeremy Armstrong Instructional Technology Master’s Program, UWG
Abstract A redesign of instructional materials was needed for an elective Astronomy course in high school. Using principles of Visual and Media Literacy for Teaching and Learning, the materials were reworked to increase comprehension and retention, while promoting both engagement and mastery. The materials were redesigned using the ADDIE model of instructional design and addressed several of the ACRL standards. The instructional materials are included as artifacts in the appendices to the text.
Comprehensive Instructional Design Plan The client for this project, Nathan Lancaster ([email protected] ) approached me with a problem. As an Astronomy teacher at Etowah High School in Woodstock, Georgia, he was struggling with a problem with material in his course. It seems that the curriculum map that had been developed created a substantial gap between the presentation of Newtonian mechanics and the subsequent expansion of physics to include general relativity and quantum mechanics. The gap, which spanned twenty chapters in as many weeks, left the students with a lag in retention. In order to adequately relate the new material to the old, it seemed that the old material needed to be re-taught, which was neither effective nor efficient.
After some discussion, I offered to redesign the material to incorporate both visual images and a way of summarizing the previously learned material while simultaneously linking it conceptually to the newer material being presented. Understandably, this would include instructions, an exemplar, rubrics for assessment and a list of the standards it covered.
Using the Analysis, Design, Development, Evaluation and Implementation (ADDIE) model presented in Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right (Piskurich, 2015), I produced a visually organized summary project that incorporated visual presentation, informational organization and relational development using a format very familiar to the students: a simple Venn diagram. By using the Venn diagram, the students would begin from a comfortable place, using a template they had mastered years before. However, asking them to incorporate not just two but three items expanded the problem into a new area. It also required them to not only describe the relationships, but to research what those relationships might be as they are not explicitly stated in any of the viewpoints. In order to produce an exemplar, the information had to be arranged in a way so as to fit into a Venn; this required the instructional designer (myself) to develop a scaffold that would not only categorize the information, but arrange it by similarities/differences visually. It would serve as a pre-Venn template. It is included as Artifact 2 in the Appendices. It was decided to provide this to the students as well, to assist them in their creation of their product.
It quickly became evident that the evaluation of the product would have to cover two different things: the physical product itself, and the presentation made by the group. Accordingly, two rubrics and the instructions needed to prepare for both the product and the presentation were created, each worth twenty points for a product total of forty points. This made it a larger grade than a simple project, but a smaller grade than a test, and was consistent with the level of difficulty and effort expected to be encountered relative to both.
Implementation consisted of four steps: grouping the students, describing the project, showing an exemplar produced by the teacher, and distributing the artifacts. Class time was provided to allow the students who might struggle to get help and guidance without delay, and to allow those with limited access to technology to use a laptop. A penalty was assessed for poor use of class time.
Using the rubrics in the Appendices, a total of forty possible points were possible for the completed project. The categories were chosen to reflect similar categories used by the Language Arts department to assess for presentations but adapted to the requirements of the Science department. Given the complexity and difficulty of the assignment, none of the groups assessed achieved a perfect score, but excellent work was still produced.
The redesigned material covers several of the ACRL guidelines, including Standard Two, Performance indicator three; Standard Three, Performance indicator three; Standard Five, Performance indicators one, two, three and four; and Standard six, Performance indicators one, two, three and four. By having the students rearrange the information and even rearrange the Venn to represent the relationships by researching the information, multiple standards were addressed while creativity, validity and data presentation were encouraged.
Reflection This project was not difficult, but it was extraordinarily complex. The ideas were simple, and the product familiar, but the information was abstract to the learners, diffuse and hard to ‘Google’. They struggled and frequently got distracted by the very technology they were using to work, which cost almost every group points. While I was not my own client, I used the same product in my own Astronomy class – how could I not after investing so much effort into it?
The students did an amazing job of creating unique Venns; some were linear, some were made of rectangles instead of circles to facilitate writing; still others had one of the circles entirely engulfed by another circle. It was revealing and illuminating to see how they perceived the relationships of the information in a temporal, physical or factual sense. It was also very exciting to see how proud of their work they were, and how perceptive their examination of the work of others was. It was a good way for some students to excel in ways they had not.
Overall, I think it was one of the best projects I ever did, and while Nathan was probably not as enthusiastic, I think it served his students well, relieved him of the burden of re-teaching material which had already been presented while offering him a complete lesson he did not have to come up with on his own.
References Piskurich, G. M. (2015). Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right, 3rd Edition. John Wiley & Sons. A. (2016, November 22).
ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy.