Instructional Systems Design

Background

In the Spring of 1992, I was fortunate enough to take EDUC 501, Essential Strategies for College Teaching, from Thom Curs, who was the Director of the Center for Educational Development at NMSU. Although the title did not indicate so, the course was specifically for new faculty engaged in distance education. Since most faculty had little or no background in education, leave alone distance education, the course was both intense and focused. We met once a week in a windowless room in the basement of Milton Hall and hit all aspects of the topic as hard as we could.

At the time, Dr. Cyrs was developing a concept he later called Instructional Systems Approach to Teleteaching (ISAT). This is a framework for designing, operating, and updating distance courses that took into account the technology, as well as all the things normally covered in course design. The basic assumptions were:

1. Almost no one gets it right on the first try. In spite of all the wonderful things we were learning, nothing replaces experience.
   
2. Even if you are lucky enough to get it right on the first try, the world still continues to change.
   

Bottom line was that we needed to build into our design a means of continually monitoring the effectiveness of what we were doing, adjust things as we go, and use what we learn in every offering to improve the next.

Perspective

As I approach the problem of redesigning a course on the basis of what I learn in OTLC, I maintain a particular point of view. Thom emphasized beginning with educational objectives and evaluating options in view of those objectives. This was not a new idea to me, but Thom assured us that it was a good one to retain in this new, strange environment. So, when I look at a technology, I evaluate it in terms of what may be accomplished with it and what other technologies might accomplish the same. I'll give an example.

Lets say I want students to be able to determine the expectation of a discrete random variable. Of course, I'll expose students to some examples of correct and incorrect ways, then state the rule, which is E[X] = sum over all values of x, the term xp(x). Now, the main question is "How will I know the students understand this?" At this point, I can consider several options, such as

• Providing a number of self-checked exercises, which will help assure students understand the computations correctly,
• Asking simple questions on computation in a test or quiz,
• Asking more difficult questions in which the students need to recognize the random variable, and
• embedding this problem in another, larger, problem.

And so on. Now each item can be implemented in a number of ways. For example, I've implemented self-checked exercises with printed problems, hints, and answers. I've done the same using links for hints in WebCT. Other possibilities include self-checked quizzes in WebCT with randomized values, and, if I were really ambitious, modules in Java. All of these options are viable, but some are better than others. In the old days, when Internet connections were slow, I used pencil and paper, but with better average access to the Internet, I'm using WebCT tools more. That is, regardless of the technology, I want to be sure students understand how to compute an expectation. I choose the technology which I think has the best chance of working. Over time, the educational objective may remain the same, but as technology evolves, the manner of implementation changes.

Objective

I have been teaching a long time and teaching distance courses about fifteen years. However, things change and I feel a need to change. In the past, while I've focused on interacting with students, as my classes become more geographically diverse, I have become more and more aware of the need to foster interaction among my students. Thus, I am most interested in how to do this in a way that increases the quality of learning.

Approach

At this time, my basic approach is to facilitate the sort of interaction I've noticed in face-to-face classes. That is, fostering first small group interaction, then gradually expanding the circle of contacts. It seems to me that an interactive group of four to six students has a great deal of instructional benefit and, given the level of the technology, about as much as I can expect in the first few weeks.

Another aspect is the use of technology. The range of technological sophistication among my students is immense. I have students who are definitely computer gurus, while others who are not. I spent a lunch hour on the phone last week with a student who did not understand the concept of "folders" in windows and tended to place files that needed to be in the same directories in odd locations on his hard drive. I find that people only absorb a certain amount of new information, then ignore the rest. Thus, I try to introduce technology in stages. This means, of course, that I need to structure the course with this end in mind. For example, although I provided examples of MatLab use in the first lecture, I did not require students to use MatLab until the fourth week. Even then, I made the mistake of putting two new ideas: running MatLab and setting up a data structure to represent a network, in a single exercise. Next time, I'll split the two ideas into two exercises.

A third aspect is the matter of encouraging students to integrate with the larger community as a whole. The course I plan to redesign is IE 561 - Workplace Safety. This is an ideal online course in that virtually all the source material and reference material is on line. So, in addition to the usual objectives in my courses, in this one I want to encourage students to go to reliable sources when they need them in the future.

Well, that is what I plan to do. We'll see how well I do it.