Blog II

Hi!

It’s been a few seeks since my last blog post. I think I’ve come a long way since the last posting. When I started this class, I had no idea what instructional design process meant. It seemed complicated and frankly too much trouble. I had developed whatever instructional habits I had from previous coursework and experience in the education field and resisted what seemed like a micromanagement of something that worked fairly well. But as time went by and I worked through the various chapters, the process began to take shape and began to make sense. I feel at this point now that I am beginning to feel as if I have an elementary understanding of the process and its purpose. I think that as we continue to work through each chapter I will continue to evolve with each step.

What has been especially interesting in my learning is how to put yourself in various situations when you work through the process. Prior to this class, I guess I always viewed instruction from the point of view—how to teach the content—rather than what I wanted the learner to do to—what kind “action” word behavior the learner would do…such as when we worked through the subordinate skill behavior and entry level behaviors. It is very enlightening to “see” instruction from this point of view.

Another thing I find particularly interesting is how much things have changed since I graduated from Kutztown in 1997 and Wilkes in 2001. In the scheme of thing—that’s not really too long ago, but in education—it’s amazing.

I had not come across active learning—at least called as active learning in any of my previous education. It seems as our understanding of good teaching evolves, a lot of what’s best is beginning to make itself known under an umbrella of sorts—or good practice is starting to become more practical to implement in the real teaching world.

As far as the relationship of learning theories—you need to keep the ideas from the learning theories in mind as you develop your instructional goals, subordinate skills, and so on. Instruction simply isn’t “I talk, you listen”. Real learning environments require the depth of understanding we are uncovering while learning this process. You may not map out each and every experience, but with time and practice—the steps of this process will become more inherent and applied over and over.

Under improvement—I just really feel as if I need to keep a handle on all of the work requirements for this course. There is a great deal of work each week and I really need to try and work ahead. It is too difficult to work from behind. I need to have some wiggle room on the front end.