Is it already October? Yes, it is! September swirled me away with an instructional pandemic of sorts – – – attempting to synchronously teach high school science to face-to-face and remote students on a cobbled-together, glitchy platform. Remote students have laptops and Chromebooks; face-to-face students have tiny cell phones screens and paper. Hours and days and weeks of no sleep and endless computer work all while adjusting my mask, floating on a cart between two floors in a large building, spraying and wiping desks with disinfectant, and checking if my Zoom microphone is on mute. A few declared COVID-19 cases announced on campus, and my instructional design project still sat, patiently waiting. This week, I finally settled into a new normal at work that signaled time to undergo another growth spurt. Time to invest time in my project and focus on what I set out to do.
What’s working…
With my project resumed, what has gone well? After sorting through the feedback provided to me by my professor and my peers, I found that my original design plan surprisingly still held much value. I was able to rely upon much of my initial work to guide me while constructing the actual course in the Canvas Learning Management System. Given my recent intensive immersion (read: “drowning”) in another inferior LMS at work, Canvas was incredibly easy and intuitive to learn. I did not require viewing any tutorials and felt very comfortable arranging and uploading course work from the immediate start. I still have very much to do. As I shared with the peers invited into my course’s interior, I am not working in a traditional, linear fashion from start to finish. Instead, I have built the overall skeleton of the course and am now affixing pieces of meat here and there.
What still needs to work…
As for challenges that face me, one situation looms above all others: finding time in a 100+ hour work week. Building a course is time-intensive, especially when constructing it fully ahead of implementation. In a traditional K-12 teaching position, a skilled teacher can “fly” with the paint still wet on a newly-crafted lesson. After all, it is relatively easy to disguise lesson imperfections from adolescents during classroom implementation. However, when preparing an entire course for review by peers prior to implementation, every little flaw becomes glaringly obvious. A thorough, unrushed, critical eye is essential.
I am still needing to carve out daily attention to my design project. Truthfully, I may only have been able to find 5 to 15 minutes every few days to look over things this past month. But if I had claimed those 5 to 15 minutes when they were available, I would be that much further along. I know that this discipline is something that I still need to cultivate for a future in professional instructional design.
An educational community
Throughout this graduate experience, I have grown to truly appreciate my peers. Not only have the reviews by my classmates and professor been mostly positive, but they have been overwhelmingly encouraging and understanding at a time when I need it most. The feedback I have received has influenced me to rewrite this project as 100% asynchronous. I had originally set out to construct it following the ill-advised model prescribed at work – – – synchronous instruction of face-to-face and remote learners while allowing for a few asynchronous stragglers. Although I will need to modify my project if it is eventually implemented in my existing classroom, I have found that building a purely asynchronous structure is much more instructionally sound. This experience is certainly driving home for me the concepts and theories about types of remote learning that I have studied over the past year.
Another requirement to growing in an educational community is offering your feedback to others. Overall, I have been amazed by the work of my cohort and always look forward to perusing the other designs. I sometimes end up asking more questions (my favorite is “what software did you use for those videos?”) and gleaning ideas than offering insight. Oftentimes, I find myself viewing the instructional piece from the vantage point of the student – – – are instructions clear, do any spelling or grammatical errors jump out at me, is there a recognizable flow. Mostly, I offer reassurance: you are on the right track, this project speaks to me, I am growing by observing your design.
It’s as easy as L-M-S…
After spending years working with the LMS wannabe Google Classroom, briefly dabbling in the independent TalentLMS, and now in the midst of a decidedly contentious and forced relationship with Schoology, I was so happy to build this course in Canvas. From rearranging components to uploading resources, everything worked. My various experiences from both work and graduate study seem to be melding. In a very short time, I have been able to apply instructional design concepts (LTEC 5210 and 5211), some of my newer HTML knowledge (LTEC 5420), and even visual treatments of graphics (LTEC 5220). Combined with my trial-by-fire with Canvas’s weaker, sometimes inept cousin Schoology, I feel very prepared. I am growing.
Grrowing Ideas 