Instructional design and e-learning
Instructional design is a many-decades old discipline; all teacher training programs such as BEd, include modules on this topic. There is a rich body of literature available on instructional design. The basic notion in instructional design is to characterise the learner behaviour based on individual psychological and other characteristics, as well as the nature of the subject to be taught and to devise a body of patterns of instruction appropriate for different students and subjects. Learners differ in the relative degree of comfort they feel with different models of teaching (for example, use of examples, abstraction, amount of explanation, etc), the rate of absorption, motivation levels and so on. Considering such factors, a variety of learning models have evolved over the years - some of the prominent approaches being behaviourism, constructivism, and cognitivism. There is also the issue of the depth of understanding expected out of a teaching-process, normally categorised into a spectrum ranging from simple recall to the ability to apply in new situations. The teaching model must depend on this; so should the nature of evaluation to be used.
In on-line learning, one faces similar issues. How should the contents of a course be organised? What kind of approaches are good for explaining different types of material? There are also mundane elements such as choice of colours, visuals, positioning, amount of text, etc. Some of the concerns are the same as those addressed by traditional instructional design. The major difference would be the new possibilities of instruction -- use of multiple media, animation, simulation, and personalised instruction -- brought out by new technologies such as Web, as well as the loss of some of the characteristics of the traditional instruction models. The lack of classroom environment may reduce the motivation levels significantly. Collaborative-learning changes appearance into computer supported collaboration models. All these factors affect instructional design and delivery.
There are professional content designers who claim expertise in instruction design for online learning. There are also books available on the topic of instruction design. Many of these actually refer only to Web-page design, and have little to do with instruction design as described above. Many courses claiming to cover content design, is 'content' with design of Web pages. On the other hand, the traditional instruction design books have little to say about online learning and related issues.
For online learning to be effective as a major player in the education-world, instruction design and delivery are two important areas to be addressed. Content that is designed keeping in mind the learner characteristics in general, and the online learning environment in particular as well as the nature of the subject, is likely to be much more effective. This means that those who are developing course content for hosting online ought to consider instruction design as a significant aspect of this process. The area is also an open ground for research in coming up with an effective set of instructional models and principles suitable for online learning models.
Are you involved in developing online content? As supplement to regular classroom environments or for stand alone learning environments? What feedback do you get from your learners, regarding the suitability of various types of content? What approach do you follow for instruction design? Do send us your comments, suggestions, insights, etc so that we can share them with the other readers of Vidyakash News.