Week2-ExpertsSpeak

As a teacher I often created lesson plans and taught lessons intuitively without really understanding how to tie the objectives to the student assessment or how to design effective learning activities. The whole notion of standards-driven instruction just seemed to restrict my academic freedom and was an irritant to me because I did not understand the purpose. When I took a course on instructional design all the pieces came together. I understood how alignment of the objectives, the activities and the assessment would lead to a better learning experience for my students. I also got much better at being able to provide differentiated strategies related to the differences in my students’ learning styles. When I started the training department, I was a one man show. I did everything from interviewing users to developing materials to teaching the courses myself. As the department started to grow, I needed to hire more trainers and was faced with the challenge of training my new trainers how to deliver the material I had developed. Only then did I learn how valuable Instructional Design methodologies truly are! While the training I had developed worked for me, it needed to be much better defined and developed in order to roll it out to other trainers. We all used it as a learning experience and in many cases, started over using ADDIE and more structured methodologies to develop our training courses. We took the time to do a thorough analysis, interviewed subject matter experts, re-designed our training, and developed instructor guides to help new trainers deliver the courses. Now my department has 2 full time instructional designers and 12 full time trainers. An interesting thing happened at our University related to Instructional Design. When we began giving online courses, the distance learning department hired an instructional designer to help us convert the courses to an online environment. She introduced us to a whole new world of ideas, methods, techniques that we had not consciously thought about before. From writing objectives, to learning activities, to assessment, we began to understand how to “tighten up” our instruction and create the foundation for a repeatable experience for students. After working with the instructional designer for the online courses, we all wanted her to help us with developing our classroom instruction as well.
 * Experts Speak – Week 2 **
 * Fifth-grade Teacher Soraya **
 * Corporate Training Manager Cathy **
 * College Professor Jim  **