Instructional+Design

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=Introduction= When we plan for teaching, we are designing instruction, so instructional design is one type of planning that takes into account just about everything we learn in educational psychology, from motivation to assessment. It often involves a sort of engineering approach to teaching where material to be learned is engineered to take into account learner characteristics, needs, and interests. The term "Instructional Design" is often associated with online learning, which is becoming a central form of teaching and learning. In fact, being able to design instructional materials for various types of distance learning is probably going to become an important skill for all professionals to have.

=What is Instructional Design?= This wikipedia article provides the basics of Instructional Design. It also contains resources if you want to go deeper into the process of instructional design: []

=Learning Activity= Take one thing you are likely to teach--make it a very small thing. For example, you might want to teach one particular math skill or the characteristics of one part of speech. Maybe you envision yourself training fellow employees for a job (in fact, you could use your current job as a source of what could be taught).

What are the characteristics of the type of learner for whom you are designing this instructional experience? Age? Level of interest in the topic? Reasons for learning? What are some factors to think about when you are designing your instructional experience, in relation to the characteristics of the learners?

What are some online activities that could be used to teach this concept? Text? Video? Audio? Interactive website? Demonstration? etc. The internet is full of this sort of thing, so search for some possible resources.

How will you know the user of your lesson has truly succeeded in learning the material you have set out?

Each page on this wiki is an example of instructional design. There are other ways to do this, but this might help you get started in developing this skill.

Briefly describe these things in a post to the discussion board.