Appendices - Instructional Design
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Masters of Education Portfolio of John Inman |
Reflection
Note: If you would like to review my instructional design projects before reading my reflection, please go to the bottom of the page.
Instructional Systems Design provided the foundation for our outcomes based instructional design and I believe the core to our program. Not only were we instructed in outcomes based instructional design, we were introduced to a systems approach to interventions which was further developed in self-organized learning. As a consultant and developer of training for internal organizational use and for clients, I developed curriculum; however, the effort was truly seat-of-the-pants. I had not been educated in the process, nor did I know when I had done something well. I felt like an advertising executive who when asked about the effectiveness of his advertising said, "Half of my advertising isn't worth a damn. The problem is I don't know which half." Not knowing which half of my work was effective was certainly a picture of me as an adult educator and was also the driving force for my pursuit of mastery in adult education through this program.
The year of instructional systems design was so valuable for me as an evolving professional in the field. I firmly believe that having a sound theoretical foundation is critical for a leader in organizational development and training. Outcomes based program and curriculum design help differentiate this masters program from others. After researching world-wide, I believe that we are leaders in this field, particularly in the United States. Australia, Canada, and England seem to be far ahead of the United States in the field, and I feel that the education we have received in this important framework puts us ahead of the nation as organizational development and training leaders. I am so thankful for this opportunity, and I now hold an outcomes framework in all of the work that I do, regardless of its nature.
We had three pieces of work that contributed to our final project for this course. The Program Outcome Guide (POG) provided the context for a complete development program. I, for one, had never thought of a program. I had only looked at individual curriculum. Shifting to a program context permanently changed my perspective on how to design interventions based on a systems and outcomes framework. The Course Outcome Guide (COG) and the Learning Activity Plan helped me develop a well targeted intervention with specific outcomes in mind. All of this work has also helped me focus on authentic assessment.
I created the intervention represented in the POG, COG, and Learning Activity Plan for a transformation project at my last employer. The program development work was necessary to help them transform the way they did business. Unfortunately, as I learned later, I did not have the internal support for the transformation work; and partially due to the work on the program, I was asked to leave the company before I was able to fully implement it. Life is interesting and every ending is a new beginning. Because of my experience introducing my intervention, I learned how to introduce innovation and have now moved into a position in the field that I love, organizational development and training.
All three of these pieces are produced in PageMaker 7.0 and they provide an example of the professional desktop publishing work that I do in part due to the coursework in the masters program. I do this same type of work in my professional life using this and other desktop publishing tools such as Quark Express and InDesign 2.0.