Dancing on Quicksand Gracefully: Instructional
Design for Rapidly Evolving Technology Courses
Richard Helps
Information Technology, BYU
265 CTB, BYU
Provo UT, 84602
+1 (801) 422-6305
richard_helps@byu.edu
ABSTRACT
One of the challenges of higher education in technology,
especially in computer disciplines, is the rapid change of technical
content. In technology disciplines with a tradition of experiential
learning instructors need to continually redesign courses to ensure
the learning experience for the students is current and relevant.
This paper discusses an approach to course design that has been
applied to a class in Information Technology that experiences
significant changes in course content on a regular basis. The
design approach allows many aspects of the course design to
remain constant, including much of the class presentation and
assessment, while including the latest technology developments
and applications in the course. Students collaborate in seeking out
new applications in technology and in sharing them with the class.
The paper discusses a course module developed using these
principles. Different aspects of the design were analyzed. Firstly
how successful is this as a mechanism for maintaining course
currency with current technological developments, secondly to
what extent is this successful for instructors to collaborate with
students in acquiring new knowledge in the discipline and thirdly
does the instructional design approach adequately support student
learning of new application areas in the discipline.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
K.3 [Computers and Education]:
General Terms
Computer Education
Keywords
Instructional Design, Design Layers, Constructionism, Evolution,
Rapid-change
1. INTRODUCTION
One of the challenges of higher education in technology,
especially in computer disciplines, is the rapid change of high-
tech content. In technology disciplines with a tradition of
experiential learning instructors need to continually redesign
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courses to ensure the learning experience for the students is
current and relevant. Unfortunately the academic reward system
offers little reward for professors to redesign courses, preferring
new research and publication (Boyer, 1990). This combination of
factors places instructors under considerable pressure as they try
to serve the needs of their students, remain current in their
discipline and advance in their careers.
There is an instructional design paradigm that offers a workable
solution for this dilemma. The instructional design is viewed as a
set of abstract layers. Each layer addresses different aspects of the
instruction, such as the content organization, the instructional
strategy and so forth. The intent of this approach is to allow the
different layers of the instructional architecture to be separately
modified and substituted as necessary. This directly addresses the
problem of courses that change in one or more aspects. If it is
possible to modify the content layer of a design while keeping
many other aspects of the course, such as teaching strategies,
control mechanisms and data-management constant, then the
effort required to keep a technology course current can be
significantly reduced. Furthermore building the expectation of
change into the underlying structure of the design suggests that
educational goals will continue to be met while the course is
undergoing continual change.
The design layers paradigm is not an instructional design
methodology. It does not have a step-by-step procedure for
generating course design and content. It is rather a conceptual
viewpoint of the structure of the design. In addition to design
layers a design methodology must be used. Reliable and well-
proven methodologies, such as ADDIE (Analyze, Design,
Develop, Implement, Evaluate), can be used to generate the
instructional design.
This paper reports on the design of a teaching module within an
Operating Systems (OS) course. OS as a higher education topic
evolve continuously and students in technology disciplines will
want to understand the latest developments in the field. Not only
is the “latest-and-greatest” of strong interest to the students, it is
expected that in their future professional careers that they will be
aware of the potential of newly available OS technologies.
The instructional module is part of a third-year university course
in Information Technology (IT). Students will be challenged to
research new developments in OS and to share them with the rest
of the class. The process of searching, filtering and interpreting
the necessary information is part of the skill set the students will
develop. The students work in small teams to gather and select the
data, the teams then each create a class presentation on an
assigned specific part of OS design. Thus the students are
achieving two different educational goals. They are developing
the skills of finding, interpreting and presenting technical
knowledge while working in social environments. They are also
learning the technical content. The problem is authentic in that
both of the educational goals are relevant for their future
professional careers and the learning environment is congruent
with professional practice.
The design layers and ADDIE methodology were not
implemented separately nor was the design done in classic
“waterfall” project development fashion, with a linear progression
from concept to analysis to implementation. The design was
developed in an iterative loop with aspects of the layered
structure, design methodology and theoretical insights occurring
throughout the process.
2. BACKGROUND
The design was intended for third-year IT students. The OS
course covers underlying principles of OS design and also
includes laboratory experiences using current market-leading OS
(Windows and Linux). These OS as well as others which are of
interest to the class experience considerable change each time the
class is taught.
A graphical appreciation of the changes in UNIX-like operating
systems (including Linux) can be seen from the on-line UNIX
history chart. This can be found at the Unix History website
(http://www.levenez.com/unix/). The timeline chart gives an
indication of the multiple changes that are constantly occurring in
just the UNIX family of operating systems. Obviously not all of
these changes need to be addressed in the OS class. On the other
hand this chart shows only the changes in the underlying
operating system. It does not show the many Linux distributions
such as SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Mandriva, and
Knoppix. Several of the features and performance factors of
distributions are of interest to the OS class. The range of available
Linux distributions can be assessed from the website
http://distrowatch.com, which displays data on the 100 most
active distributions but there are many more. Once again only a
small number of these will be of interest to the class but even that
small number will require changes in course content every time
the class is taught, if the course is to remain current and relevant
to professional practice.
The above examples are drawn from one of the most widely used
OS families. Similar evolutions can be found in the Microsoft
Windows OS. And many other less-well-known but technically
and academically interesting operating systems have become
available or have undergone significant changes in recent years.
For the instructor to be able to refer to these systems in teaching
requires regular updating of class materials. Textbooks, with their
well-designed instructional approach, assessments and learning
aids, do not keep up with new OS developments.
2.1 Summary of needs
Clearly there is a significant need for an instructional approach
that addresses these problems. What is needed is:
• A way to ensure that students receive a thorough grounding in
the fundamentals of their discipline to gain an educated viewpoint
of the topic area as a whole. This foundation will enable them to
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evaluate and contextualize new knowledge for many years into
their professional careers.
• A way to incorporate new and interesting developments in the
topic area into the learning experience so that students (and
instructors) can remain current in their rapidly-changing
discipline.
• A way to incorporate this new technical; content into the
instruction without requiring the instructor to completely re-
design the instructional paradigm, course structure, the
assessment mechanisms, the delivery materials and other aspects
of the course each semester.
3. COURSE DETAILS
3.1 Course Materials
A variety of course materials were developed to support this
project.
3.1.1 OS Model
In order to provide a contextual framework for the content
area the instructors of the course designed a conceptual model to
guide the class instruction. This was done by analyzing a number
of textbooks in the content-domain area and developing a
representative model as shown in figure 1 below.
Operating System Model
User
Virtual memory
Memory
Task Management
User interface
Scheduling
Management
Cache Mem.
File System
A.P.I.
Applications
Utilities
DMA
Input Output System
Device Drivers
Peripherals (Hardware)
Figure 1 Operating System Model Structure
Each section of this model expresses a different OS concept.
These different sections form the basis for how the technical
content of the class assignment is divided up. People with
different roles have different viewpoints of an OS. For example
users see the User Interface (UI) as the whole OS and are unaware
of the technology behind it. This is illustrated in the way users
report faults in terms of UI displays. (EG “The screen is taking
too long to change” or “the mouse is acting strangely”). They do
not have (nor should they have) the background to analyze
underlying problems with the OS. Another example of different
roles is the way that programmers view the OS. The Application
Program Interface (API) provides a programmer with controlled
access to all the facilities of the OS. Similarly a system
administrator would focus on optimizing the performance of the
system by concentrating on task management and file systems.
The different roles in this model and its application to
instructional design for an operating systems class model has been
described in a conference proceedings (Helps & Renshaw, 2004).
The class discussion of this model helps students develop a
context for future discussions of various OS applications.
Relevant to the major design goal of this module is the fact that
the subsections of the above model are not expected to change
rapidly. IE OS design will require UIs, applications, File Systems
and other sections of the model for some time. What will change
very rapidly are the specific implementations of these different
sub-sections, and possibly the relative importance of the different
sections as OS design implementations evolve.
3.1.2 Class Assignment
Class members were invited to form teams and to select sub-
sections of the OS model presented above. Each team researches a
specific implementation of one concept area of the OS model,
such as kernel architecture, file systems, process management,
etc. They were then challenged to find the latest applications for
that specific sub-domain based on current technology. The model
above provides an organizational context. Supporting materials
for the prominent OS implementations (Windows XP and Linux)
are provided through the class website. The complete assignment
with grading rubrics and other class notes is also provided through
the class website
Note that these assignments refer to specific OS (Win/Linux)
but not to specific versions or implementations. Thus the
assignment sheets will not change from semester to semester until
a new operating system is chosen for the assignment – a relatively
slow evolution.
3.1.3 Grading Criteria
The students are also provided with grading criteria sheets. The
criteria are developed as rubrics. The students grade each other on
presentations and the instructor separately grades the teams with a
slightly modified rubric. The rubrics assess the quality of the
information found and also the effectiveness of the student
presentations. They are not specifically designed for a particular
OS implementation but they do allow for assessing how well
students addressed particular implementations. Thus they can
remain relevant for a relatively long time without redesign.
4. LAYERS APPROACH TO ISD
A number of theoretical approaches to the design were
considered. There are a variety of instructional theories relevant
to technology instructional design. Only one of these is discussed
here, which pertains specifically to the evolutionary nature of this
design, and that is the design layers paradigm.
The system design for this instruction was conceived of in a
layered structure using the layers developed by Gibbons et al.
(Gibbons, 2000; Gibbons & Fairweather, 2000; Gibbons &
Rogers, 2006; Gibbons & Rogers, 2007) The design of the
instructional module was conceived of in terms of the need for
and influence of different aspects of instructional layers. Each of
the layers can be considered as separate aspects of the design,
using different design tools and theories. The most important
aspect of the design layers for the purposes of this project is the
fact that they can be separately imported and exported from the
course design as a whole. Thus a course can be designed and
constructed initially using conventional design methodologies.
Later as the needs of the course evolve the layers can be removed
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and replaced. This can be done without changing the overall
structure of the instructional module. Thus ISD approaches focus
on the instructional needs of the target population, the desired
outcomes and related necessary aspects of the design. When a
layer of the design is removed and replaced, most, if not all, of
these ISD aspects will remain little changed.
Since the major focus of this design is the issue of how the
instructional design will change in the presence of changes in
technology and other changes in the instructional environment,
the implications for change are discussed together with each layer
in the in the appendix. The seven layers of design are defined
below.
1. Content: the content layer is concerned with the abstract
organization of the instructional content. How will it be captured,
partitioned and represented?
2 Strategy: Every artificial thing the designer does, all of the
dimensions of all the artificial events. Deciding how to structure
the course presentation is included here.
3 Control: The actions that the learner can perform. How does the
learner speak to the system?
4 Message: The structure and message types that the system will
use to communicate with the learner. Messages can be verbal,
written, body language etc.
5 Representation: Motions and signs, instantiation of the
messages with specific multimedia content; colors, fonts, screen
arrangement, etc.
6 Medialogic layer: The logic that controls the media that carry
the message to the learner.
7 Data management: Record keeping, progress monitoring
accumulating the record of the instruction.
These layers were used to analyze the OS course module. During
this process several factors were notable. The relative importance
of the layers to the goal of being able to evolve courseware varied
quite widely. Some layers, such as the content and strategy layers,
were very important, as were their relative time-scales of
evolution. Other layers were less important and could be changed
by future users of the system with minimal disruption.
The specific implementation of these layers in this project is
discussed below, together with an estimate of the implications of
of change for each layer.
4.1 Content Layer
There are two types of instructional content in this project. The
first is the technical domain-specific content relating to
applications of computer operating systems (OS), the second is
the skills the students learn in finding and processing technical
information.
Although the domain-specific technical content changes
significantly, the ontological structure used in the class is
relatively static. This structure, described in the Course Materials
section, will change, but on a multi-year cycle rather than
semester by semester. The application examples from specific OS
within the content area, such as Microsoft Windows or Linux, will
change on a cycle time of a year or faster, as discussed
previously, so these aspects are encapsulated such that they affect
the course design minimally..
The structure of the research and organizational skills content of
the module is expected to be relatively static. Currently search
engines, such as Google, predominate but the principles have
been around for decades, dating back to the 1945 article by
Vannevar Bush “As We May Think” (Bush, 1945). Sections 7 and
8 of the article, although hypothesized in terms of mid-twentieth
century technology, are a remarkably insightful description of the
need for and application of the integration and dissemination of
knowledge and, equally importantly, the techniques for searching
for necessary applicable knowledge in a manner suited to human
thinking. These philosophies are implemented in modern search
engines. Thus the skills and processes the students will use to seek
and validate the domain-specific content will evolve on a scale of
several years before significant changes are required.
4.2 Strategy Layer
The strategy for teaching the students the necessary research and
organizational skills is separate from the students learning the
technical content. The strategies chosen for this project were
chosen in the light of the previous background of the students and
the overall departmental objectives. Other circumstances could
recommend other strategies. Teaching strategies in the current
course are based on Constructivist approaches and include
authentic learning approaches. These strategies could change
without seriously affecting other layers of the design. The rate of
change of teaching and assessment strategies is not based on time
so much as on changes in educational approach dictated by the
institution or other external factors.
4.3 Control Layer
Students have a number of control mechanisms within the course
structure.
A key control mechanism is the way the students communicate
with the knowledge base in which they seek the answers to the
assigned research questions. Currently this is a mixture of reading
provided materials, searching the library and, predominantly,
searching the Internet.
Most of the classroom interaction mechanisms (controls) change
fairly slowly. Where change can be expected is in the way
students will communicate with the Internet. This is a
continuously evolving area and new search tools and methods are
continuously emerging. These mechanisms could cause changes
in the course on a scale of 1-3 years. These changes would affect
the rest of the instructional design minimally, if at all.
4.4 Message Layer
Messages take a variety of forms. In addition to the conventional
ones of normal class instruction and assignments, this module
makes use of on-line course materials. Of particular note is the
challenge given to student teams to present their materials in a
creative manner. This is intended to excite students to use
creativity. In line with Gagne’s events of instruction (Gagne',
1970) this both gains their attention and invites them to gain their
classmates attention. It also creates a form of expectancy
4
This layer may change as necessary. The challenge to the students
to be creative has been successful in eliciting enthusiasm and
significant effort in their creating meaning in the materials they
find. This has largely been communicated through the instructor’s
attitude and approach to the presentation. Changes in this layer
would probably affect the strategy layer but would have minimal
affect on the content or other layers.
4.5 Representation Layer
The central representation for this design is controlled by the
ontological structure represented by figure 1. This diagrammatic
representation of an operating system is used as the reference
point for the student explorations.
Further representations are created by the students for each other.
The students study the specific sub-domain technical topics and
then develop representations in the form of skits, cartoons, videos
and other media to communicate their developed understanding to
their peers.
The structure represented by the OS figure is intended to be a
stable structure which can be used for discussing evolution in
operating systems for years to come. The representations created
by the students are ephemeral. They are created by the students
partially as a way of constructing their own understanding and
partially to share that understanding with peers. Since the
technical material that they represent is the latest technology, the
representations will age rapidly. They will have served their
purpose and will no longer be required.
4.6 Media-logic Layer
Instructions to the instructor to ensure the material is presented in
the best way at the best time are a major portion of the media-
logic layer. In general in higher education professors insist on a
significant degree of freedom in teaching.
As far as media is concerned, the availability and the use of
technology such as PowerPoint software, course web sites, and
the like are powerful tools which enable the instructional events
but the specific tools and logic are not central to the instructional
design. Changes in this layer are instructor-dependent and will not
deeply impact other layers.
4.7 Data Management Layer
Data is recorded in the Blackboard course management software.
This delegates to an automated system all the tasks of maintaining
student grades, making them available wherever the Internet is
available, with due regard for privacy issues. Other data
management tools offering the similar functionality could be
substituted with minimal impact on the instructional design.
5. THE TEACHING EXPERIENCE AND
OBSERVATIONS
5.1 The Teaching Experience
Near the end of the semester the module was introduced to the
class. The first stage of the presentation consisted of discussing in
class the concept of learning through teaching. Material related to
this form of learning was presented and discussed in class. The
background material for this was made available on the class
website.
The students were challenged to not only find the new technical
content, but to make their presentations creative and interesting.
In class the suggestion was made that students could do their
presentations through any effective presentation method – even
creative dance. This suggestion almost always gets a laugh from a
class of technology students. Humor has a role in piquing student
interest. The invitation to use exotic forms of representation
stretches the boundaries of the student’s creative approach.
Although permitted almost none of the student groups limit
themselves to a PowerPoint presentation; they attempt something
much more ambitious. Typically this will include skits or video
presentations. It is the author’s opinion that the challenge to
present something more creative in the presentation enhances the
students’ reflective thinking about the concept. As they decide
how to present their results they also need to reflect on what are
the essential or key concepts of their findings. Although no formal
assessment was done of this aspect of the project it is also felt that
that this helped the students address the class with additional
enthusiasm and improved the quality of the presentations.
If there are sufficient student teams to cover the basic topics then
other teams can explore more esoteric applications of OS. A few
students are sometimes anxious to explore some topic not on the
list. Because these students are strongly motivated by their
curiosity they usually give interesting and valuable presentations.
Students form teams in discussion with each other and with the
instructor. There are informal discussions about topics, research
resources and presentation ideas.
At this point the instructor was acting as a resource, rather than
controlling the process. The class presentations were made as
scheduled. The presentations were spread out over 4 class days
with typically three presentations in a class period. This pace was
prepare his own research notes on each topic and summarized
each student presentation using his own notes and provided these
notes to the class. This however, seems to somewhat defeat the
purpose of having the students find the information In future an
alternative assessment method may be sought.
5.3 Student Presentations
This instructional approach has been used previously in a
prototype format as well as in this more formal evaluative
environment. Over the various times it has been used a number of
interesting presentations have been developed by the students.
Some are worthy of mention because of their creativity or their
instructional aspects or because thy provide insights into the
student learning. For example, one group created political
cartoons to demonstrate prioritized task scheduling as part of
Linux kernel management. See figure 2 below
This political cartoon is interesting because firstly it attracts
student attention with a topical idea and secondly the analogy
between the cartoon characters’ actions and the operation of the
operating system in process management is a reasonable
characterization of the functioning of the OS. Thus it provides a
valuable mnemonic device for the students.
A higher priority process becomes
available
Scenario: While using the computer, a
user is removed in favor of a higher priority
user. The moderator removes the user and
saves any important information.

found to be rather intense and time was at a premium.

Presentations were 15 minutes each and class periods were 50 When a higher process becomes
available the scheduler removes the current
minutes. This left no time for discussion or anything else in a process and saves its information.

particular class.
Finally student learning of the technical content was assessed
through a conventional written exam.
Figure 2 Process Scheduling Cartoon
5.2 Observations
Another group created an elaborate Jeopardy game with questions
In terms of separating the technical content from the instructional
and prizes which they used as an instructional tool. See Figure 3.
design several points were noticed. The assignment
The displayed content was a live Jeopardy board that when the
documentation and the assessment of presentations documentation
various categories were clicked the questions were displayed.
are all independent of the domain specific content.
Answers were also available after the question had been
During the presentations the instructor made personal attempted.
observations of the concepts presented and used these notes to
The gradation of the questions from easy (100) to hard (500)
prepare content-specific exam questions. Several of the student
provided a way for students to learn topics from simple ideas to
presentations included a summary of their research (PowerPoint
subtle implications of those ideas.
slides or videos). These summaries were posted to the class
website and available to the instructor and to students to prepare Two groups created video presentations (movies) to illustrate OS
for the exam. concepts. One of videos was a parody of Steve Irwin the
“Crocodile Hunter” searching through the wilds of computing to
Preparing for the exam was challenging for the instructor, since
trap elusive operating system concepts, complete with tree-
the technical content presented by the students was a little
climbing and crocodile wrestling scenes. The other was a video
disorganized and variable in quality and approach. In previous
game demonstrating intra-OS communication techniques. Each of
attempts to use this module in teaching another instructor chose to
these was very successful in attracting student interest.

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 5.2.1 Assessment of Student Performance in the
Domain Content
The students all took an exam after the presentations. The exam
consisted of 30 objectively graded questions. There were
questions drawn from each area of the content presented by the
student groups. A few questions were covered by more than one
group presentation. In order to analyze the relative effectiveness
of student learning of material they researched themselves
compared to what they learned from their peers the performance
of the students was evaluated in answering questions which were
related to their presentations vs. questions related to presentations
by other students.
This analysis of the exam results reveal that there is very little
difference between the scores on the sections of the test that each
group prepared and presented and on those sections of the test that
others presented. See table 1 below
Kernel Process Memory File Potpourri
Architecture Management Management Systems
Table 1. Student Test Results
100 100 100 100 100 Overall Scores
Total number of student responses analyzed: 40
200 200 200 200 200
Average Range
Class scores 77.9% 40% - 98%
300 300 300 300 300
Score breakdowns by presentation vs. observation
400 400 400 400 400 # Students Avg Score
Performed better on sections of 22 76.3%
500 500 500 500 500 own presentation
Performed better in other sections 18 77.3%
Figure 3 Jeopardy Game for OS presentation

The results of this assessment indicate that the students, on

It is apparent that a number of the students (more than half the
class) spent many hours preparing and practicing their
presentations. This kind of commitment is a reflection of the
students’ enthusiasm for this approach to learning.
5.4 Evaluation
Evaluation of the success of the module was done as follows.
Firstly an evaluation was done of the effectiveness of student
learning. This is necessary to meet the constraint that the module
must be effective in enabling students to learn the applications of
specific operating systems to the underlying theoretical OS
structure. Secondly the module was evaluated to see to what
extent it met the needs of helping the students acquire new
knowledge in their discipline while keeping the instructional
design constant. This requires an evaluation of the effort needed
for incorporating the new content material into the course and
whether the instructional design structure is adequate and
appropriate for evaluating the students while not specifically
including the content-domain material.
average, mastered the material (average score 78%). The scores
indicate that the students successfully learned the technical
content. The learning of the technical content is thus considered
satisfactory. An interesting comment by some class members was
that they did not use the class material to answer some of the
questions, but rather used the research techniques they had
learned to find their own answers to the problems.
The fact that students scored about the same in areas they
presented in as they did in areas presented by other students is
interesting. It does indicate that there is not a serious discrepancy
in their learning by presenting vs. learning from other
presentations or other means.
5.2.2 Evaluation of Presentations by Class Members
The presentations were evaluated by class members on two rubric
criteria – the creativity of the presentation and the (perceived)
effectiveness of the understanding they achieved. The possible
scale of responses was from 1 (bad) to 4 (excellent)
The presentations were rated consistently within the two highest
categories indicates that the students felt the presentations were
satisfactory.

6
6. ANALYSIS AND ISSUES
6.1 Student Learning
The students were able to successfully acquire the content-domain
specific knowledge that was expected of them. Exam scores
indicated satisfactory levels of mastery.
The students also acquired skills in researching and analyzing the
assigned sub-domain topics. The evidence of their success in this
area is reflected in the quality of the presentations to the class.
The teams were also assessed by the instructor based on their
presentations. The average score for the teams in terms of their
understanding of the concepts was 2.9 (on a 1 to 4 scale) and the
assessment of the quality of the information they presented for
their specific content sub-domain was 3.4 (1 to 4 scale). This does
indicate that the student reflected an understanding of the topic in
their presentations and also that they were able to find good
quality data relative to their assigned sub-domain.
6.2 Instructional Design Analysis
Separating out the various layers of the design has explicitly
identified the various components that can change together with
key parameters of the various changes such the time scale
expected for certain layers of the instructional design and also the
relative importance of some layers to achieving the objectives of
the design. As the design is applied in different applications this
will enable future instructors to modify the design to suit their
own needs with a explicit information on the implications of
changing various layers to suit alternative environments and the
extent of the effect such changes will have on the effectiveness of
achieving the original goals of the instructional module.
One of the objectives of this project was to see if students could
be involved in helping to maintain the currency of the course
relative to current developments in practice. There were a number
of evidences for this and at least one weakness. It appeared that
the class was above-averagely enthusiastic in their approach to
this assignment. Evidence for this is found in the many hours that
were obviously spent by groups in preparing their presentations.
A substantial amount of new technical knowledge in the content
domain was presented to all the participants, instructor and
student alike. The students were obviously able to find a broad
range of knowledge relating to new developments in the field.
Although it was apparent that students had found multiple
relevant resources in the content domain, the current instructional
design does not include a required mechanism for them to pass on
the knowledge other than through their presentations. Most of the
groups chose to create some form of electronic record of their
research which could be shared with the class. These were posted
to the class website. This process should be formalized in future
versions of the design. The learning was consolidated for all
participants through the content-specific examination process. For
the purpose of instructional design analysis all the class
presentations were videoed. At this time the videos are not been
publicized but this could be considered for future classes. This
could form another reference record for all participants..
6.3 Using This Approach for Instructional
Design
The intent is that course designers should be able to use this
experience in designing similar courses for themselves where
aspects of the instructional design change rapidly. In order to be
able to do this the following steps are proposed.
1. Define the course objectives and also the goals for being able
to change the system as aspects of it evolve rapidly.
2. Identify the rapidly changing aspects of the system under
consideration. Indicate their rate or change and relative
importance to the course objectives.
a. Use the design layers approach described in this paper in
order to complete this step. Even though the instruction has
not yet been designed design it should be possible to identify
rapidly changing aspects.
3. Define a structure to encapsulate the rapidly changing
portion of the design. In this project the technical content
was the rapidly-changing portion and the ontological model
of an operating system was the encapsulating structure.
4. Choose an appropriate instructional design methodology
(Such as ADDIE) and design the instructional module. In the
course of this design do not let the rapidly changing
segments become entangled with other slower-changing
aspects of the design. EG try to keep assessments for the
rapidly changing section and slower changing sections
separate.
5. Go back and identify the rate of change and importance of all
the layers of the design.
6. Build a syllabus and instructional materials for the prototype
system.
7. Assess and evaluate the success of both the instructional
module
7. CONCLUSION
Instructional design in terms of design layers was found to be
very effective in explicitly identifying aspects of the design and
considering their replacability. Future work in this area could
include a more thorough analysis of the layered natured of the
design. An example of this can be found in Gibbons et al
(Gibbons, McConkie, Kyeongju, & Wiley). Future work in this
area can also explore the effects that changing the course has on
achieving the instructional objectives intended.
8. REFERENCES
[1] Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the
Professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching.
[2] Gibbons, A. S. (2000). What and How do Designers Design? A
Theory of Design Structure. Paper presented at the AECT 2000.
[3] Gibbons, A. S., & Fairweather, P. G. (2000). Computer-Based
Instruction. In S. Tobias & J. D. Fletcher (Eds.), Training and
Retraining: A Handbook for Business, Industry, Government,
and Military. New York: Macmillan Reference.
[4] Gibbons, A. S., McConkie, M., Kyeongju, S. K., & Wiley, D. A.
I. Theory for the Design of Instructional Simulations and
Microworlds. In.
[5] Gibbons, A. S., & Rogers, P. C. (2006). Coming At Design
From A Different Angle: Functional Design. Paper presented at
the AECT Research Symposium.
[6] Gibbons, A. S., & Rogers, P. C. (2007). The Architecture of
Instructional Theory.
[7] Helps, C. R. G., & Renshaw, S., A. . (2004). Design of a flexible
case-study instructional module for operating systems for
information technology. Proceedings of the 5th conference on
Information technology education, 56-59.