Author Archives: Melissa A. Venable

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About Melissa A. Venable

Working at the intersection of instructional design and technology, social media, and career development.

TCC 2010 Online Presentation and Resources

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I’ll be presenting a session titled Communicating, sharing, and learning online: A guide for starting your own blog on April 21st at the TCC Worldwide Online Conference. I’ve attended this event twice, but this will be my first time presenting here! Per the conference tip sheet’s instructions I’ve tried to keep my slides simple. There are a lot of related resources I would like to share with the session attendees, so I’ve collected them here in this post.

My main objective with this presentation is to encourage my fellow instructional designers and technologists to consider blogging as a professional development activity. I think there are a lot of unique approaches and stories out there and sharing them via blog can be educational, helpful, and cathartic. I do not claim expertise where blogs are concerned, but I do believe in the learning benefits and potential for collaboration.

Whether or not you attend this conference or session, please reply with additional suggestions for us all. Thanks!

Choosing  a Blogging Tool – Many free options available! Obviously I have a bias here but encourage you to explore and compare. What are your favorite bloggers using? A nice comparison of WordPress and Blogger is available online.

Finding Your Voice

I challenge you to find someone who explains this any better than Jess Jurick did at WordCamp Miami. Check out her presentation online. 

Setting Goals

I lot of people actually blog about blogging (it’s not just me). Take a look at what some of them are saying about setting goals for the experience and for the process itself.

Writing Ideas

So, you would like to give blogging a try but don’t know what to write about? Where is your expertise? What are you interested in? Here are a couple of nice lists to get you started.

The “Cool Kids”

I am showing a few examples in the presentation itself. Who are the big names, leaders, influencers in your field of expertise or area of interest? Check out their websites and blogs. What are they talking about? Which posts get the most response?

Some Things to Think About…

…As you get started

…After getting set up

As you move forward with your own blog, remember your goals. Revisit them frequently!

[View presentation slides via slideshare.]

Image credit: Stock.XCHNG

Review: The Essentials of Instructional Design

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I was recently asked to make textbook recommendations for an Instructional Design course. One member of the team recommended I review The Essentials of Instructional Design: Connecting Fundamental Principles with Process and Practice by Abbie Brown and Timothy Green.  I had never heard of this one among the standard instructional design texts of Dick & Carey, Smith & Ragan, Morrison, Ross & Kemp*… but wanted to take a look.

This book is a concise guide to the process of instructional design. The authors mention in the preface that “this is a book for beginners”.  It’s not highly detailed, but is a solid overview. The most impressive aspect of this book is the direct link to practice. The authors add several components to each chapter to drive home the need to be able to apply the concepts in a workplace environment.

Connecting Process to Practice – This section presents five or six mini scenarios related to the chapter topic, often placing the student in the position of the Instructional Designer who is faced with a decision or challenge of some kind. These are not clear cut, right/wrong situations, but ones in which a variety of approaches might be selected. What approach would you take and what is your rationale? K-12, higher ed, and business examples are provided throughout. A couple of examples:

You are the instructional designer for a nonprofit organization with a number of volunteer workers. The volunteers are often familiar with the telephone system of the organization, which makes transferring calls difficult for them. What might you do to address the problem?

Describe an instructional design scenario in which you believe a formal needs analysis would not need to be conducted.

Professionals in Practice – These brief entries provide perspective on the chapter topic from working instructional designers. These professionals represent a range of work settings and international locations and present some sort of lesson learned or example from their own experiences. Job titles and organizations are also listed providing a link to career exploration for students.

Each chapter also includes a Recommended Reading section that provides a short list of items to explore for more information. These include books, articles, and websites.

Recommended for:

  • Students studying for comprehensive/qualifying exams in instructional design programs.
  • Undergraduate courses in instructional design.
  • Instructional design/curriculum design related courses in non-ID programs.
  • ID professionals currently working in the field who haven’t gone through the formal coursework, but want to learn more about the theories, etc.

*For more information about the selection of instructional design textbooks, check out this study published in 2009, Essential Books in the Field of Instructional Design and Technology. The authors surveyed instructional design and technology professionals asking them to rate the importance of various books to the field. The result is a list of 10 books that “should be included in every instructional designer’s or technologist’s personal library.”

Photo credit: qualtiero, Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

Instructional Design Documents

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This blog recently went through a name change, from “Talking and Typing About…” to “DesignDoc”. One interpretation of “DesignDoc” is a formal outline of what will be developed for a course, as in an Instructional Design Document. This document can be used to map out what will be developed and is often used as an agreement of work to be done before development starts. My experience has been that every workplace has its own version, requirements, and format, but the elements are pretty consistent.

What are the main components? A design document for an online course or module might contain items from the following list:

  • Purpose of the course/module
  • Learner description – technology skills and resources, prior knowledge
  • Goals and objectives of the course/module – learning outcomes to be measured
  • Plan for assessment of learning – methods for measuring achievement of learning outcomes
  • Selection of
    • specific instructional strategies – asynchronous and/or synchronous
    • specific media methods to be developed – video, slideshows, audio narration
  • Information related to time to complete
    • the development process
    • the course/module from the learner perspective
  • Scope and sequence of topics to be covered
  • Resources required for development of the course/module
  • List of team members and primary responsibilities – ID, SME, Media Experts, Graphic Artists, Editors…
  • Plan for maintenance and update of the materials
  • Approvals – to be acquired before development begins
  • Plan for testing and quality assurance

What’s missing? Please reply with any recommendations you have for adding to this list.

Online Resources and Examples:

Photo credit: ragnar1984, Flickr