Instructional Designer

A good friend of mine was looking at the employment website for UVU and noticed that the school is hiring an Instructional Designer.  She mentioned it to me, so I thought I’d look at it to see exactly what it is that an Instructional Designer does.  While looking at the summary of duties, I quickly realized that I actually knew what some of these words mean.  That’s a lot for me. 

Here’s the summary of duties from the job description:

“…works directly with subject matter experts to identify course goals and objectives and will work with production and development staff to design, develop, and deliver technology-based educational media and interactive learning experiences. Exercise skills in current educational and internet technology, including major learning management systems, social media, office and multimedia software, and web development skills.“ 

Looking at the job description of what this Instructional Designer will do I’m excited for all that we will be learning in the five semesters of this program. 

Backwards Design

Last week’s reading was very interesting.  It was different to have two different design views to be read and understood the same week.  The Backwards Design is a design process where you start with identifying the desired results.  This means you have to think what it is that you are trying to accomplish.  Once you figure that out, then you determine the acceptable evidence.  How will students achieve the desired results?  The last thing you do is plan the learning experiences and instruction. 

I’ve been teaching a computer class for seven semesters, and never once have I thought about using the backwards design.  Ok, I admit, I just learned about it, but it totally makes sense to use this way.  Instead teaching straight from the book (which is totally the way I have to teach), I should be looking at the course by the outcomes that I want my students to walk away with.  Next semester, I’m totally going to use the backward design, and see how different and useful it is.

Computers and ADDIE

I thoroughly enjoyed the class interaction this week. It was great to learn about ADDIE, and how all the steps relate to each other. When first starting this course, I really felt that I was in over my head. I felt that I was in the wrong major and that I was the dumbest person in the course. However, after tonight’s class, those feelings and worries are starting to go away. There were two things that we discussed tonight that really stuck out in my mind. First, was our discussion on the computer in the classroom setting, and second, was the definition and description of the ADDIE Project.


Professor Monson had a quote by Seymour Papert. The quote reads:

“There won’t be schools in the future…I think the computer will blow up the school. That is, the school defined as something where there are classes, teachers running exams, people structured in groups by age, following curriculum-all of that. The whole system is based on a set of structural concepts that are incompatible with the presence of the computer…but this will happen only in communities of children who have access to computers on a sufficient scale.” (Seymour Papert, 1984)

I find this quote really interesting. I am amazed at how much influence technology has in the school setting. When I was younger, I had to go to the library to do the research for all of my reports, and if I wanted additional practice for math homework, I received that from the teacher. Today, you can find anything out online, at anytime of the day. You can literally sit in bed, wearing your pajamas and research online. The use of the computer is just amazing. Everyone literally has access to a computer, either at home with their laptops, in an education setting with open labs, or even at the public library. With the computer, society literally has the world at their fingertips.

What does ADDIE Mean? A question that I was a little confused about last week.

Analysis: Is this a problem instruction can solve. What is the problem that you want to solve or the task that you would like your audience to learn?

DESIGN: the planning of what you are going to do. In this step, you will be clarifying the objectives, showing examples and non-examples, and identifying the means of evaluation.

DEVELOP: The stage in where you create and use media to get the content across to the student.

IMPLEMENT: The actual instruction. In my mind, this seems like it would be the easiest part of the ADDIE Process.

EVALUATION: Reviewing if and how the implementation worked. Were the objectives met, did the students understand what was going on? Did the audience answer the question you were asking? This is the purpose behind the ADDIE process.

I know that this is just the beginning of the course, but it helped me understand where I’m going with this degree, and how the whole instructional design process works.