Vivian Neal

Welcome Heather!

It's lovely to hear from someone who is relatively new to instructional design! Along with several other people in this seminar, you say that you've tried to educate your clients and that "In some cases it seems to have actually worked." Could you describe exactly what you did that worked? I'm thinking that the quality of our dances has to do with the movements and steps that we take - the learner analysis, creating prototypes, etc, yes, but also the interaction, the words and phrases, the timing of our suggestions, the flow of conversation, talking over coffee....

Welcome Robbie from Indianapolis, USA and Susanne from Farum, Denmark! We have a truely international group in this seminar!

I'm glad you've both found the time to share your experiences with us!

Robbie, you mention evaluation of learning outcomes as an important piece of the process. I spoke with Barbara Barry this morning (see her posting above) and she described a project where the central part of the process that lead to eventual success was the fact that she was able to move some of the responsibility for design from herself to the instructors by implementing student evaluations of the course. Once the instructors recieved the feedback, they were open to revision and participated in a re-design process.

The way Barbara described it, she was somewhat sceptical about the process until the student evaluation. Perhaps Barbara could elaborate...?

Diane, thanks for sharing these ideas!

It sounds like the first step for you is to find out more about your SME and build a relationship, and only after that do you look at design. Is this a mentoring or scafolding type of model?

I often think that instructional design is much less about design per se, and much more about building these trusting collaborative relationships. Most SME's at the university level have little exposure to the processes of course development and yet they are indeed experts in their fields. Perhaps it is this wide difference in expertise (expert in one, novice in the other) that makes ID scary for SME's. As I write this I'm aware that these acronyms are internal to our field and most SME's are unaware of their meaning.

You say, "if I've done my job correctly.... " Could you share more about what this would be? How do you entice an SME to design using ID ideas and processes, or to be open to course revisions?

Salvor, Great stuff!!

Thanks for your contribution and for sharing your work! You are clearly very comfortable with the technologies and a true innovator! Even without knowing the Iclandic language, I can see that your classes are inviting and interactive, and your photographs draw immediate attention and engagement.

As a proficient designer, how do you go about considering your audience and defining your learning outcomes? Could you describe the processes that you use to design your courses?

Welcome to this three week seminar on the dance of the instructional designer!

How do instructional designers balance the competing demands of relationship and team building, pedagogical principles and instructional design processes? How do you integrate the strengths and limitations of your SME (Subject Matter Expert)/instructor with the features and functions of the technologies? In my experience, this balance requires a customized dance to suit the unique characteristics of each project, team, program and course. Yet some projects feel like graceful ballets while others keep me tripping over my feet!

How do you balance these competing demands? Do you sometimes feel that you are compromising your pedagogical values to ensure that good relationships are maintained?

Please contribute your ideas about how you go about doing your instructional design work, and for those of you who aren?t instructional designers, your questions and observations are greatly encouraged as these will definately help to clarify and define the roles in the design process.