Thursday, April 30, 2015

An Instructional Resource Prototype


An Instructional Resource Prototype
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Twitter: @jonacuso
Post 158

Antecedents

·         Instructional resources can be costly in time and effort to develop. Creating rough drafts or prototypes of instructional resources will help any teacher or instructor evaluate and revise the resources before one commits the time and effort to make a final version that can be used as part of a current or future course.
·         In addition, a prototype allows us to review and revise our own resources, making sure each single resource is supporting the desired learning objectives and goals of the course one gets to be teaching.
·         In this Assignment, from the instructor’s point of view, I want to show how I developed a prototype for one instructional resource from my Action Plan (which is posted right here by as Blog Post #157) and that is reproduced too at the end.
·         I wanted to analyze how that resource supported my learning objectives for the online course I was –at that point- developing. This can give you a rough idea of how the ADDIE model for producing instructional material.
·         Then, I explored how to mitigate implementation challenges that could arise for my instructional resource.

The Actual Plan

In my action plan for my Materials Design course at the university level, it was indeed essential to visually provide learners with some sort of aid for them to build their own reading activities for their current or future EFL/ESL students. As someone who constantly browses the web to try to spot new material and media to be used in my courses, it is often difficult to find what I would simply call tailor-made ones. So, when there is no such a thing still available on the web, it is our instructor’s task to create it to give to our students for the understanding of the subject-matter and for them to accomplish the learning outcome of a unit, week, or module in our course outline and program.



In my action plan, I highlighted an instructional resource I do not think it really exists. It is highlighted in red, and included here as well:

Instructional Resource
Video or slideshow to display how a reading activity is designed

What would a prototype media look like to help students understand how a reading activity for language learners is designed? 


If asked about the challenges in regards to this piece on instructional resource, I must admit that it has to do with the students’ reaction towards it. Its success can only be measured if the learning outcomes are produced, and depending on how well it is achieved, then we can say that is good. If not, we need to start over again with the analysis, based on the ADDIE model, to mitigate the misleading impact it can produce.

Doing something like this is indeed a challenge.



Concluding Remarks

          Basically what we have here is an attempt to help oneself find the suitable steps to create instructional pieces that can facilitate student knowledge acquisition. As soon as learners have gotten the information required, the next step is to find (a) way(s) to help them develop their skills, so they can visualize how this skills can actually become a competence they can exercise at work. By means of this, we have indeed helped students learn something deeply.



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