Week 6 Reflection

I have left the last couple of reflections off of my blog - as they were very specific to the reading I did, it wouldn't be good reading for people who haven't read the books.  However, this week's seems like it would make sense to anyone.

The first question for this week's reflection, we've been asked to consider the similarities and differences in the three primary contexts in which instructional design and technology is found: business, PreK-12, and higher education.

The biggest similarity that I've seen in all three contexts is this: know your audience. Jacquie McDonald, an Instructional Designer from Australia who wrote in chapter 22 (about higher education) said, “...the ability to interact effectively with faculty staff, and “sell” ID theory... is a key ID skill.” Deborah Lowther and Steven Ross explain in chapter 21 (about ID PreK-12 schools) that the first step is the ASSURE Model for classroom-level technology integration is “Analyze learners.” In chapter 18 (about ID in business and industry), Monica Tracey and Gary Morrison point out that instructional designers “must identify the societal and learner cultural factors.” Know your audience.

I observed one difference from PreK-12 to business and higher education: The technology gap. Granted, as a high school teacher from an underfunded alternative program, my personal bias probably led me to focus on this difference (and hopefully not use too much hyperbole when describing it). Chapter 21 is the only chapter that mentioned this. Both (successful) business and higher education take in more money per pupil than PreK-12 public schools, so they are more easily able to provide the necessary equipment to employees/students than the public schools, especially those in more impoverished areas, are able to.

Another difference that stood out to me was how much emphasis two of the contributing writers from chapter 22 put on pedagogical instruction in ID for higher education. Again, due to my bias, I must have assumed that college instructors have been given some basic instruction and have a decent understanding of pedagogy, but it seems that Brenda Litchfield and Jacquie McDonald use a lot of time and energy teacher college instructors how to teach. This isn't needed so much in PreK-12 since we have made that our specialty, and in business, ID isn't typically concerned about teaching the clients how to teach so much as how to perform a task or operation correctly/more effectively.

The second reflection question for this week had us consider the lessons of Robert A. Reiser and his experiences in obtaining a career in ID.

Lesson 2 (Most Instructional Design Positions Are in Business and Industry) stood out to me. To be frank, I'm fairly young, and teaching is looking less attractive all the time. I've been rolling around the seeds of ideas in my head, and this lesson fits into those sprouting ideas well. (A friend of mine was just speaking to me today about subbing for him in his computer assistance/repair/education business he is getting started when he is too solidly booked. With my pedagogical knowledge and budding ID knowledge combined with his knowledge of hardware and software, we could possibly do great things in a business with that kind of vision. Like I said, though, this is just a sprouting idea. It definitely needs more water.)

Lessons 5 (Acquire a Strong Set of Skills in the Production of Instructional Media) and 6 (Acquire a Strong Set of Design (and Analysis!) Skills) tie together closely, but they stood out to me for different reasons. Lesson 5 fits in to not only this class, but also a class I'm taking concurrently: EDT 5030 – Fundamentals of Visual Design with Adobe. I really enjoy designing things and completing projects using Adobe products, and my skills are improving drastically (though I'm still very much a novice). Lesson 6 stood out because I'm a teacher, and that's what we do. We design lessons, units, and assessments. Then we analyze the assessments to see what needs to be done better, why something didn't work as we planned, etc.

Lesson 8 (Develop a Strong Set of Communication Skills) was the final lesson that stood out to me . It stood out to me because it brings us full-circle to the start of this response paper: know your audience. How can you do that if you don't have strong listening and clear speaking skills?