Design & Development: Assessments

It has been a while….this, I know.

Work and school are keeping my schedule pretty saturated. Tons of instructional design work being completed in the process, therefore it is all worth it, right?

So, I must rant and rave for this posting.

Oh, I was so annoyed this week!

There is a reason why instructional design professionals recommend the designing of assessments before developing instructional materials (e.g. student and instructor guides, powerpoints, multimedia objects, etc.). Such practice keeps your instructional content in alignment with the course/lesson objectives.

This has been the case with my professional and academic experience.

Within this current project, our development schedule is as follows: content first, then revision of the practice activities and written assessment tests. Some of these items have been created before the writers arrived, but we are still there for a reason. It is hard to work in an environment where people are not trusting your experience as an ID. So, I am finding myself constantly going back into the primary instructional document and adding content based on new info from the assessments….Whew! A time consumer to say the least.

I know, I know. As IDs we have to adapt to constant change.

With every client there will be criteria outside the realm of our traditional ID or educational practices. This, I understand. Actually, I am all good with it. Conventions will not always have an appropriate place for every part of a project.

For all my IDs, trainers, educators, I recommend the design of instruction in this order:

1. Conduct an analysis
2. Establish your objectives based upon the analysis
3. Design assessments based on the objectives
4. Develop instructional materials based on the assessments

….simple, quite simple.

Need we send a mass e-mail to all those trying to be trainers?:-)

My New Content Development Job

Not much activity from me this week, huh?

The latest opportunity is a ~ 4 month contract content development position with Information Mapping, Inc. The Information Mapping method of organizing and presenting content is definitely one of the better forms of standardized writing. As far as my experience goes…

Most of my responsibilities will be technical writing and document design oriented. Of course….these two areas of designing instruction seem to follow me everywhere.

The funniest aspect of this job is the transformation of training documents from Word Perfect to MS Word!

Yes…I said “Word Perfect.”

I thought the industry was moving more toward Adobe FrameMaker for template-based document design needs. So to be working with Word Perfect is a true shocker. Nonetheless interesting. I guess these are the types of jobs that help grow you into a true instructional design/technical writing professional.

I think I even said in a previous post about how all my FrameMaker training wouldn’t even be considered for the next job. Boy, did I hit the nail on the head.

My SME—working with my Subject Matter Expert has also been pretty interesting. It has only been a week, but I already realize the benefits to developing a supportive relationship with good communication.

The project has had a rough start due to many external factors that pre-date the arrival of my team and I. But, you know that’s the nature of the game. Either way I am sooooo on board and ready to work.

My Primary Goal: to develop the best instructional documents with my SME that the new batch of students will find useful during their entire program.

All my years as a student should definitely have prepared me for this position.

De Anna L Fench
eduTech gEEk writer

Storyboards & eLearning (Pt. 3)

How detailed does a storyboard need to be so it is considered “sufficient”?

Any large-scale eLearning project may easily have several instructional designers in addition to programmers, graphic artists, photographers, animators, videographers and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) (Leonard, 2004; Alessi & Trollip, 2001).

Both Kruse (n.d.) and Alessi and Trollip (2001) believe that in order for a storyboard to effectively guide the members of a team, it must (at a minimum) include the following:

• Project information (i.e. title, unit #, section #, etc.),
• Screen labels,
• Audio and narration information,
• Video clip descriptions,
• Graphic descriptions,
• The content to be included in the on-screen text,
• Navigation and interaction descriptions, and
• Notes related to the design choices (i.e. text style and size).

At what point in the design and development process do you think content, graphics & assessments should be developed?

Assessment items help to narrow content, therefore assessments should be developed after objectives have been defined and an instructional strategy has been planned. The objectives and strategy assist the designer in developing the most efficient assessment materials: students have a greater chance of mastering the learning objectives, while focusing on the planned content (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2005).

Content development follows assessment development. After one has decided the learning objectives and developed assessments based off of those objectives, then writing and revising the content can begin. Assessments help a designer determine what primary and secondary textual content is best for the instructional phase (Alessi & Trollip, 2001).

Graphic artists (or whoever is in charge of the graphics on your team) develop graphics after the storyboard has been reviewed and signed-off. Since the instructional designer uses the storyboard to communicate the physical layout of the instructional content, then those in charge of developing graphics (or animations and other interactive, supplementary components) should become very knowledgeable of this document. To save on time and money the graphic artist may want to take a further step by having a one-on-one meeting with the lead instructional designer and/or project manager to affirm the details of the storyboard.

***Additional Storyboard Resources

Alessi, S.M. & Trollip, S.R. (2001). Multimedia for learning: methods and development (3^rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J.O. (2005). The systematic design of instruction (6^th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Kruse, K. (n.d.). Creating scripts and storyboards for e-learning. Retrieved on May 19, 2007, from http://www.e-Learningguru.com/articles/art2_5.htm

Leonard, T. (2004, November 15). Creating and using storyboards. Retrieved on May 19, 2007, from http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Practices/Creating-and-Using-Storyboards/1/

De Anna L Fench
eduTech gEEk writer