This week was a whole new world for me as a professional and as an educator. Never before had I heard of Instructional Design, yes after listening to the lecture I began to put it together and apply it to what I have witnessed or use, but this week was a struggle. It took me a very long time to grasp the concepts that were being discussed in the articles but after finishing the week I believe that I have somewhat of an understanding of instructional design and all of its facets, which seems to be ever changing, which is the way the world works.
The article this week that I made most of my connections to was the article titled A Hard Look at ISD by Zemke and Rossett. I appreciated the quote on page 6 by Rosenburg, "We've created a religion around it. We've tried, for instance, building these great binders of directions on the assumption that a PhD. in instructional design and a monkey, both following the same step, would produce the same instruction, well they won't. But they will produce the same documentation. I think we've put the process before the people who actually do the process, and that's led us astray." I agree completely with Rosenburg in the sense that as teachers, effectiveness is the key. I have read a lot of the research conducted by Michael Fullan and I made the connection between texts of when Fullan discusses the disadvantages to having ineffective teachers and having an ineffective teacher 3 years in a row puts those students far behind students who have had ineffective teachers. I think that some many times we focus on the documentation, the test scores, the application, the appropriate grade, etc. and we lose sight of the learning and skills that are progressing within our youth in school or if we take instructional design outside of education, the work and learning that takes place in the military, at Google when teaching interns or new employees, or with someone new into a research environment. I think today more than ever, through the help of technology and the globalization of our world and daily lives, the linear, one size fits all does not apply to most of the work or learning taking place. The old adage "There's more than one way to skin a cat," is one that I taught my 6th graders this year in math. Some of my students were teaching and helping me learn strategies that they had created to solve a problem, whereas when I was taking math there was one and only one way to attack a problem and I am happy to see this progression within education.
One of the questions I pondered this week came about while reading the article by Zemke and Rossett as I referred to earlier. In the article they discuss the idea of routine in learning. I know from my undergraduate studies, methods courses, and student teaching experience routine has been a major focus and then this article talked about it as something not necessarily needed. Is routine important for learning of just for a well maintained classroom, business, system, organization, etc.? Do people have to have a routine in order to learn? I had always thought that routine was so important within the classroom and have worked many part-time jobs where we did the same things when we came to work, during work and leaving work, not that a lot of learning happened in those jobs other than life and social skills, which are necessary as well. As I pondered this question I began to think about some of the best learning environments that I have had or some of the times where I have learned the most and there aren't many routines that took place for my learning to occur. A lot of my learning has come through conversations or watching others in their skill or craft or having someone model for me how to do something and then I would try. In a lot of my learning as an adult, outside of classes, there hasn't been much a routine, so are they referring to the ways in which I learn as an individual, like Garner's multiple intelligences? Within instructional design, no matter traditional, R2D2, rapid prototyping, ISD, or all the other systems is routine part of the design? I don't see it listed in most but there is a specific template or design structure that most traditional models follow and even within my studies of rapid prototyping they had a step by step procedure to follow in order to use the design, although it is altered along the way based upon feedback and samples.
I started the week off feeling very overwhelmed with a brand new concept, with so many avenues and definitions and the discussion groups helped me to close the gaps and hone in on the specifics of Instructional Design, whether it be ISD, traditional or a new approach. I appreciated sharing my understandings and also reading others' to help me fill in gaps that I had. It truly is amazing when multiple brains are put together how much more learning can take place and this week has proved that once again.
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