In the last eight weeks of working through all the course modules, I have had a better

understanding of instructional design process. My initial assumption was that anyone with a
background in education could be a perfect instructional designer. As I went through this course,
instructional design concepts and facts became more understandable and I now view and
discover instructional design skills at a high level through professional lenses.
Learning more about task analysis in this course has enhanced my skills in analyzing and
articulating what I expect a target audience to know and perform. The experience gained in this
course has developed my ability to identify and analyze many instructional and performance
issues, contexts and strategically positioned to provide viable solutions in my workplace. Prior to
this course, I had not formally conducted task analysis of situations/scenarios like we did in this
course. As a matter of fact, the task analysis experience I gained in this course, taught me to
involve stakeholders in situations, evaluation and design of instruction.
Learning to define, tweak and revise learning objectives in this course was another wonderful
experience to me. At first, knowing to generate terminal objectives prior to identifying the
enabling objectives was an eye-opener in my journey into the instructional design world. At the
initial stage, it was a bit tough understanding the difference between the two concepts, but after a
series of brainstorming, reading, the required and additional course materials, and lots more, the
coast became clearer. I was actually stuck with developing the terminal objectives and enabling
objectives for my CDD, but after some days, I was able to address the objectives that sync with
what the target audience should be able to do. Moreover, working on the enabling objectives
matrix (EOM) was another landmark of the course experience that boosts my passion for
instructional design as a career. With this EOM task, I was able to develop new strategies on how
to match learning objectives with what students are expected to do and the instructional
strategies that help the students to achieve the learning objectives. One thing that strikes me
when I reflect on this piece of the course is that in instructional design, it seems one is done yet,
even when you think you are because I had to move back and forth between my project goals,
the unit topics, the terminal objectives and the enabling objectives. On the whole, the task of
defining goals and objectives focused my attention to the role of behavioral principles such as
feedback, sequencing and a good definition of learning objectives in instructional design.
Apparently, transferring the skills gained to my workplace would enable me to guide faculty and
instructors in the right direction of developing appropriate learning objectives that meet learners
needs.
Instructional design is a process that is employed in creating efficient and effective learning
process. Since learning is a complex concept, and there is no one size fits all approach when
making decisions about instructional design, by learning about instructional design models and
competencies from other students perspectives, I have learned and come understand that the
expectations from instructional designers working I different organizations differ in different
contexts. Based on my experience with the instructional design models and competencies
experience in this course, I intend to combine a blend of multiple instructional design models
with special focus on ADDIE, Dick and Carey, and the Morrison, Ross and Kemp models in my
workplace. Both the ADDIE and the Dick and Carey models would be useful with respect to
front-end analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation (formative and

summative) of the ID process. The iterative nature of the Morrison, Ross and Kemp model would
useful to me in providing support services to faculty and instructors.
The knowledge of the various learning theories in this course has provided me a deep insight into
the learning process and how learning styles impacts how course content should be organized
and sequenced. Prior to this course, I had a unidirectional perspective of how course content
should be structured. In view of the new experience in this course, I am able to reflect back on
how I had structured course outlines in the past based on my limited knowledge and how I would
improve on course development skills. Similarly, the course has deepened my understanding of
various types of learning theories, their relatedness and their influence of instructional design
process. For instance, I found constructivism, active learning theory, elaboration theory and
connectivism have exposed me to the value of and the connection between culture, social
context, content structure, learners previous experience and artefacts such as technology in
instructional design process.
Considering the avalanche of technological innovations, the learning theories comparison
assignment in this course provides me an insight, understanding and directs my focus on
ensuring that appropriate technology would be adopted and integrated into courses to connect
students and promote collaboration during instructional design process. Reflecting on the
learning theories learned in this course, I now recognize that learners learn best through social
constructivism and/or social interaction. A better understanding of social constructivist approach
has changed and expanded how I will design instruction to include instructional strategies, peer
collaboration, peer assessment, teach back and other methods that involve learning with others.
As potential professional instructional designer, the motivational theory that strikes me as we
progressed through this course was the cognitive theory that emphasizes intrinsic motivation and
also provides the contexts that enables learners to discover solutions to issues and challengers.
Prior to this course, I did not know the difference between child learner and an adult learner with
respect to motivation. Now, I quite understand the vast difference between what motivates a
child learner (pedagogy) as compared to what motivates an adult learner (andragogy). Initially, I
believed that learner should memorize a part of the instruction. However, as a new convert of
constructivism, my focus has started to shift from teaching to learning and fro passive to active
and authentic learning. Beyond this, I will continue to create learning environments that will
enable learners to engage in experiential learning.
A quick look into my personal growth since I started this course, I feel confident to face
challenges and ready to launch into the instructional design world as a professional. All said and
done, I still need to learn more about alternative designs, evolving technologies (especially the
authoring tools), more about the learning environments outside the learning management system.
I am therefore creating an action plan and looking forward to implementing the plan on how to
engage in personal learning for my professional development.
References
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