ETEC 510

Assignment for week 10-Instructional Design

Dr. Farmer
Submitted by: Doug Sallade
1. Karen was supposed to work on an instructional design process. What was she
expected to do as an instructional designer?
Create an interactive, multimedia program, show casing each program area on
campus
2. Identify where Karen may have done things differently to avoid her problems. What
could she have done differently in the initial meeting? What could she have done
differently in subsequent meetings?
In the first meeting she should have conducted an impromptu needs assessment
to get a feel for the scope of the project from the perspective of the advisory
committee of faculty and high-level administrators. Subsequently, she should
have entered a phase in her instructional design where she concretely
determined the goals and objectives, and received the agreement of the advisory
committee for those goals and objectives. I do understand her position, she just
wanted and needed the job, so she was willing to accommodate the committee
and all of the changes they requested; she might say that she was being flexible.
However, as we see from the results, the project suffered from a lack of:
organization, a concrete plan, and goals and objectives, and therefore did not live
up to the expectations of any of the participants.
3. Why did the product fail in such an embarrassing way?
Karen was not organized in her approach to the project. She lost focus of the
final product, because the final product was constantly being modified. Karen
threw it together at the last minute, and it seems she was more concerned about
the "look" of the product instead of the functionality.
4. What went wrong during the project?
It's hard to hit a moving target! Since she didn't adopt an instructional design
model, she never really settled on any firm goals or objectives, or if she did, she
allowed them to be changed by the committee.
5. What could Karen do differently in the future?
For any future instructional design, she should adopt an instructional design
model (ex. General Systems Theory or ADDIE - Analyze, Design, Develop,
Implement, Evaluate). These and other models can provide the framework,
structure, and organization Karen was lacking in the previous project.
6. How can Dr. Lucas remedy the situation? Where does he go from here?
I feel as though I'm being overly critical of Karen. It was, after all, her first project
as an instructional designer. I think she is entitled to a little leeway here.
However, being her first project, she needed much more support from Dr. Lucas.
Karen needed Dr. Lucas to stem the tide of changes from the committee, settle
on a design and build it.
Here is my opinion of what I think Dr. Lucas should do, hire Karen for one more
iteration of the project. She has 3 months to take the existing program and come
up with a design (with goals and objectives clearly stated), build the program and
implement it. It would really be a boost to Karen, who I'm sure is crushed, Dr.
Lucas knows she can do the job (she just needs some protection from the
committee), and ultimately, the project is completed to "most" users satisfaction.