Project Summary
| Intended Audience | Learners new to the Instructional Systems Technology, Performance Technology, and Instructional Design Fields |
| Budget Range | Low (as-is) Can add elements as desired |
| Project Role | Analysis, Instructional Design & Development, Content Creation |
| Tools | Articulate Rise, Audacity, PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop |
| Created | 2020 |
Origins
As an Assistant Professor, I taught an undergraduate course focused on introducing students to the fields of Instructional Systems and Performance Technology. For learners newly exploring our field, it can take a long time to build a functional understanding of the nuanced approaches we use to improve organizational performance. To help learners make sense of it all, I wanted to provide a small instructional experience which focuses on some of the more challenging core elements (i.e., definitions, relationships, roles).
Design Overview
In this mini-course, I used Articulate Rise to introduce learners to the field of Instructional Systems Technology. This training consists of instruction and some activities focused on the following objectives:
- Define Instructional Technology
- Situate Instructional Technology within Performance Technology and with consideration to Instructional Design
- Examine the role of technology in Instructional Technology
This training is informational, so there isn’t any type of assessment built in (although there are some interaction activities). This type of training could be scaled up to become a more in-depth course itself; included as part of another training (modular); or presented as is to build engagement.
The Process
Analysis
The idea stemmed from a course I was teaching as an Assistant Professor aimed at introducing students to the field. From here, I did some research and reflection on what the core of the field is, and where new learners stumble the most. I drew upon some of the foundational work of the field, including Saettler’s histories of the field, Reigeluth’s early volumes of the “green book”, and other classic and foundational texts. I also reflected on my own experience, and had some conversations with others who were both experienced and new to the field to identify important topics. I also drew upon more recent sources for information, including professional organizations, and modern reflections on technology.
Design & Development
Given the information rich subject, I wanted to play around with the presentation of fairly text heavy content in a way that reduced cognitive load and increased engagement. Rise was good for this, in that it is responsive and allows for interactive activities, bullet points that move in without being disruptive, and provides ways to break up the content without distracting from the flow (it actually enhances it!). Some challenges with the tool are limited control over specific elements, and a limited range of behaviors authors can produce.
Because I already had much of the content built out for an undergraduate course, the main task here was sorting and chunking the information, paring it down to the most essential bits (the learners engaging in this didn’t sign up for a 16 week course, after all!), and transitioning it to be suitable for a broader audience.
Summary
All in all, I am pretty happy with how it turned out, and believe there is a role for Rise in smaller projects which are focused on information delivery, require a quick turnaround time, or which may contribute to a larger course or instructional system.
Would you like this for your organization?
I am happy to help!
