Effective content in online learning is the key ingredient to effective design. In my course, EDU 624: E-Learning Design for Diverse Learning, we thus far have gone over design principles, as well as absorb and connect activities, as defined by Horton (2012). The principles and activities in this blog summarize my key takeaways from the content I have thus-far absorbed.
Design Principles
Our first unit was mostly a content refresher on the ADDIE model of instructional design, as well as some key best practices, and also some bad practices. I've talked about best practices in a lot of past blogs, let's talk about some bad practices we went over in this course. According to Horton (2012), some bad practices
include:
-
Course design that solely consists of reading and writing papers respectively. Non-stop reading and writing rinse and repeat until the course is over. The learner quickly becomes disengaged and is likely to not retain much of the course material.
- Courses that are overenrolled that focus solely on lectures and memory retention. Such courses do not provide meaningful learning experiences for learners, and as a result, the learner may forget most of what was learned once the course ends.
- Warn and Scorn: Scaring learners with legal mumbo jumbo and requiring the learner to agree to acknowledge each screen or section is a surefire way to disengage most learners.
- Overuse of technology: Technology can just as quickly become a barrier to learning, as it can be a bridge. My mentor Dr. Lisa Manley always says” It is important to be certain technology does not drive the learning, but that the learning drives the technology." (L. Manley, personal communication, November, 2020). What Lisa means when she says this, and she says this often, is that we must make calculated, informed decisions about the technologies we as educators utilize when creating instruction.
Absorb Materials
Absorb materials are content reinforcement activities that help support the content in a course or training. Content reinforcement activities can take many forms. Simple PDF readings, PowerPoint presentations, videos, or voice-over presentations, are all examples of absorb activities (Horton, 2012).
During instruction, we utilize absorb activities to help teach the learner about the topic. We then give formative assessment activities to allow the learner to do or “practice” the activity to gain further understanding. Absorb activities are important in a course or training as absorb activities make up a large portion of the learner’s experience.
My favorite absorb activities are videos because videos are so dynamic. Videos can check every single box depending on the type of video utilized. A video can be a slide show, a physical demonstration, a software presentation, informational films which are close to a classroom type of lecture, or dramas which can be roleplay activities in a fictional scene, to name a few (Horton, 2012).
Do Activities
This brings us to Do Activities, and the video activity makes an for an excellent segue. Not only can a video be an Absorb Activity, a video can be a Do Activity as well. According to Horton (2012), Do Activities can be one of three types: Practice Activities; Discovery Activities; and Games/Simulations.
- A practice activity is typically also known as a formative assessment, and the learner begins to practice the work learning the content receiving feedback from the instructor.
- Discovery activities are often more of a guided learning experience. A great example of a discovery activity is a case study. The instructor can ask the students some open-ended questions to help guide the learning experience based on the case study as the learner discovers the content-to-learner connection.
- Lastly, a do activity can also be a game/simulation. Games/simulation include quiz shows, panic rooms, achievements, the list goes on.
Videos are so great because a video can check most of the aforementioned boxes as well. Game elements, video dramas, case studies, etc, can all be blended into videos. While videos are great, it is important that we do not use too many videos, and the videos are not too long. According to Horton (2012) as a general rule of thumb, videos should generally be under 10 minutes in length, though this can depend on the type of video, and it is a good idea to ensure the video quality and academic reliability are reputable and not questionable. Scripted videos are almost always a better option, with quality backdrops where applicable and adequate sound (Horton, 2012).
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My Project:
Learning is one thing, retaining and using said knowledge is another. There is another type of activity that we will be exploring more of in this course, and Horton (2012) calls this a Connect Activity. Connect activities are activities that allow the learner to link learning to life, work, and future learning (Horton, 2012). The "Connect Activity" for me in this course is to create a training where I apply the learning concepts from this course, to an actual training.
I am currently working on a training where I will be applying these elements in my design. My institution currently utilizes an assessment software to assess program outcome performance across various programs. Our current software is very archaic, clunky, and unstable. We have had significant struggles with the faculty and student populace at my university when using this software. As an organization, we are moving another direction with a new assessment software called Portfolium to make the assessment process easier for all. Over the course of the next few weeks,
I will be building a Portfolium goal-aligned training that makes effective use of Horton’s (2012) design, absorb, do, and connect activities, with the aim of teaching the faculty to effectively use the new assessment software. The training will be built into our Canvas LMS system and will be asynchronous. Everything will be digital, nothing physical. A computer and a web-browser are all that the faculty will require. PDF handouts and lecture notes, YouTube-hosted video content will be embedded into the LMS training directly.
In the weeks to come, I will be showing more of this training here on this blog, but for now, that wraps things up. Be sure to check back in approximately two weeks from the date of this entry for my next blog post!
References:
Horton, W. (2012). E-Learning by Design: Vol. 2nd ed.
Pfeiffer.