eJournal #6

Selecting Instructional Media

In your eJournal entry this week, identify the media that you’ll use to augment or deliver your instructional strategy or strategies. Provide rationales for your selections, whether those rationales are based on affordances or other media selection approaches.

For the Drug Free Workplace eLearning, I will be using several items. First, the lecture portion and audio script is in Microsoft Word. The storyboard was built in PowerPoint. The final product will be completed in Adobe Captivate and will have audio overlay. There will be video added in to the project which will be done by our Communications Department and inserted into Captivate. Pictures will come from photos.com. Fortunately, we have all of these materials, so nothing will need to be purchased. 

eJournal #5

Identifying Instructional Strategies

The steps in the instructional design process covered up to this point have been deciding what you are going to teach; the purpose of this assignment is to determine how you are going to teach the instruction. Aninstructional strategy refers to sequencing and organizing content, determining learning activities, and the content delivery system. A good instructional strategy takes into account what is known about facilitating learning via research in educational psychology—what theory or theories should you apply? However, in designing your instructional strategy, you have to go beyond naming the theory or methodology. At a minimum, you also need to identify the following three major components that when part of an instructional strategy will facilitate learning:

1) motivation: how will you engage and motivate your learners to learn?

2) prerequisite and subskills: what is that they will learn and in what order?

3) practice and feedback: how will you know that they have learned it? and how will you let learners know whether they’ve learned?

In your journal this week, solidify your instructional goals and think through what theories or methods you’ll draw upon to help learners attain them. Then begin formulating your instructional strategies. 

Motivation, Skills, Practice and Feedback

Motivating individuals in an online environment is a challenging task. Hopefully, the learners will have some intrinsic motivation to learn the material since it is relevant to their jobs. Since the Drug Free Workplace eLearning is a requirement of their employment within the first 45 days after new employee orientation, learners are motivated to complete it, and many others, due to the requirement. However, to actually encourage them to learn the material and learn from it is a different story.

To engage the learners in this new eLearning, I will include interactions where learners can click on answers and receive immediate feedback about their choice and how it relates to a drug free workplace. I will include learning scenarios based on specific incidents within the Department of Mental Health that are relevant to every person’s job level. They will read the scenarios and apply the policy when making their choice for the best action to take. Also, I will include some questions throughout the eLearning to see if they are understanding the content. Besides being interactive, the eLearning will be visually appealing. The current one includes a cat and dog talking to each other. Yikes.

The eLearning for Drug Free Workplace is in the following order:

Section I: Welcome

• A description of the eLearning
• How to navigate the eLearning
• Who to contact if the eLearning is not functioning properly

 Section II: The Process

• Content on process
• Scenario with interactive steps for process to follow
• Tabs with content: pre-employment, reasonable suspicion, follow-up tests
• List of drugs that are tested
• Alcohol test scenario/policy application
• Drug test scenario/policy application

 Section III: Timing of Tests

• Content on timing of tests
• Costs of tests to agency and employee
• Employee status during tests
• Transportation
• Refusal or tampering with a test
• Tabs with content: positive test results, right to justify, negative test results
• Confidentiality

 Section IV: Test and Application

• Required multiple choice test questions (base them on scenarios)

Besides what was mentioned above, the Department requires a multiple choice quiz at the end of the eLearning. Learners must make an 80% or higher in order to receive credit for the eLearning and receive their certificate. The quiz provides immediate feedback on what was missed and participants are allowed to go back and review the material. I am not a big fan of the end of learning quiz, which is why I’m trying to create more interaction and learning scenarios throughout the modules rather than rely solely on the multiple choice quiz at the end. 

eJournal #4

Analyzing Instructional Goals

Over the last couple of weeks, your analysis has focused on identifying an instructional problem, assessing needs, analyzing context, and determining characteristics of learners. In our class discussions, we’ve also explored a broader context than the school, institution, or organization for which you are designing instruction—examining the nature and scope of attitudes, skills, and abilities needed in the 21^st Century.

The result of these analyses should lead to the development of instructional goals broad, generalized statements about what is to be learned. Some like to think of them as a target to be reached, or "hit." They differ from objectives, which are clear and concise statements detailing what the learner will be able to think, know, or do as a result of completing the instruction. Instructional objectives also describe the context in which the newly learned attitudes, knowledge, or skills will be applied and any tools available to the learners within the performance context.

The formulation of goals and objectives usually comes in the design phase. However, prior to moving into that phase, instructional designers analyze various goals and subgoals for the types of learning required given the needs assessment, context analysis, and characteristics of learners. In your eJournal entry for this week, think through what types of learning will address your instructional problem and explore possible goals and/or subgoals for the instruction that you will design in the next phase of the process.

Special note: Make sure you consider existing curriculum (if any exists) coming from the state, approved at your school, etc. I’d like you to also reflect on the question posed by Ritchhart, Morrison, & Church: “What kinds of thinking do you value and want to promote in your classroom?”. You may also consider another question implied in the excerpt from their book, “What kinds of thinking are necessary to build disciplinary understanding?”

For more guidance on Writing Instructional Goals & Objectives, visit http://www.personal.psu.edu/bxb11/Objectives/

This is my goal:

• Employees will report any suspicious behavior related to drugs in the workplace.

These are my subgoals:

• Employees will identify agency policy which prohibits use of drugs in the workplace.
• Employees will read learning scenarios about incidents of drugs in the workplace.
• Employees will make choices regarding what s/he would do in a given situation related to drugs in the workplace.
• Employees will respond to feedback about choices made regarding drug incidents in the workplace.

I really have to stop and think about whether I’m delving into objectives or stating overall goals of the course. The eLearning I inherited on Drug Free Workplace really just tells the learners to “report any suspicious behavior especially if related to drugs.” However, upon further analysis, I think this is the one overall goal of the eLearning and does not include the subgoals. The subgoals relate to the reporting, but give different, observable behaviors. Again, when I get into observable behaviors, I am probably delving more into the area of objectives. 

As our authors state, “Complex learning centers on integrated learning goals and multiple performance objectives that comprise tasks found on the job or in life. These coordinated goals and objectives promote the application and transfer of skills that make up complex learning.” (page 117) Building on the goal and objective, in a logical progression, helps students "reconstruct existing schema to align them with new experiences." ( 118) All levels of Bloom's thinking are necessary to construct meaning; however, think of it as a cyclical process that can return over and over to different areas rather than a linear hierarchy. Understanding is constructed through a real or simulated environments and through solving  problems with varied structures, complexities, and abstractness.

eJournal Entry #3

Analyzing Learners

Last week’s journal entry focused on analyzing context and this week’s reading discussion probably gave you additional insights about the broader context than the system or organization that you are designing for. This week, focus more specifically on analyzing the learner population that you will target with your instructional design. You’ll find more specific information on the key considerations in analyzing learner characteristics on page 25 in The Instructional Design Knowledge Base. Feel free to find additional sources that describe the learner characteristics you need to analyze.

Special note: You should do some research to gather information for this analysis and include links or attachments of the sources that inform your analysis in your journal entry.

For this journal entry, I based my learner analysis off of the Dick and Carey ISD Model. The questions they use for the Learner Analysis are some of my favorites and really cause me to think about my audience/learners. (http://www.itma.vt.edu/modules/spring03/instrdes/lesson5.htm) 

The questions are:

1. What are the general characteristics of your target population? Examples include age, grade level, topic area, etc.
2. Are there any entry behaviors that are not specific to your goal, and yet you feel are required for your intended learners to possess? (Entry Behaviors)
3. Do the learners already know something about the topic? (Prior Knowledge)
4. Do they have a positive attitude towards the content and the delivery system? (Attitudes Toward Content and Potential Delivery System)
5. Is it reasonable to expect them to want to learn what needs to be learned? Is the topic likely to interest them? (Academic Motivation)
6. Is it reasonable to expect that they can learn what needs to be learned? (Educational and Ability Levels)
7. Do they have any general learning preferences? (General Learning Preferences)
8. Do they have a positive attitude regarding the organization providing the instruction? (Attitudes Toward Training Organization)
9. Are there any important group characteristics? How similar or diverse are they? (Group Characteristics)
10. How did you obtain this information regarding the learner characteristics?

The general characteristics of my target population are new employees ranging from 19 to approximately 65. They are mostly new and unfamiliar with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services; however, they may have been employed by the Department previously or worked as contractors for a time. Mostly, few of the new employees have experience with policies and procedures of the Department. I am able to gather this information each month, since my department conducts the face-to-face portion of the new employee orientation.

While the new employees understand “Don’t do Drugs” and that the Department is a “Drug Free Workplace,” few really understand the policy and what this means to them as part of their job duties. They leave regular face-to-face new employee orientation with the basic knowledge of “Don’t do Drugs in the Workplace and report it if you see someone,” and the required eLearning takes it one step further into understanding the policy and how it applies to them. Basic behaviors that are necessary for them to begin the eLearning are reading skills and problem solving skills for the learning scenarios (which will provide them feedback if they are not correct choices).

Sadly, the new employees have to complete a series of eLearnings that will leave them with a negative attitude. This is due to a variety of reasons. First, the quality of the original, rapidly developed eLearnings in 2009 are such that they often make no sense, contain old, irrelevant information, and are visually scary. Second, navigating the eLearnings isn’t always clear and consistent from one to another. Someone thought it would be fun to put buttons in different places or not to put written instructions on what to do next. Third, the LMS that is currently being used is old, has many issues, and times out the learner. This creates great frustration on the part of the learner because s/he has to call the HelpDesk and have things reset. So, there is no positive attitude toward eLearning after they do a couple of them.

The learner comes into the eLearning with an attitude of “I know this, it’s about don’t do drugs in the workplace...duh.” This is hard to combat. There is little motivation initially to take the eLearning. This is something I will have to combat and attempt to create interest immediately and make everything relevant to their job. The eLearning will serve as further education for all employees ranging from Patient Care Assistants (PCA) within a facility to new Administrators within a facility or central office. The audience contains a wide range of education, job skills, and technology skills. This will be a further challenge since a PCA has a vastly different job and experiences with drugs in the workplace than the administrator will have who sits in central office. For this project, and the needs of the Department, the learners only have the choice of an eLearning which will include some lecture, activities, questions, and learning scenarios.