A Distance Learning Blueprint

Project Description: A fictitious global corporation was seeking a Distance Learning solution for training their instructional design staff to convert traditional classroom courses into online or hybrid courses. The plan involved selecting a strategy for the course design (all online or hybrid), designing an instructional plan, developing a prototype, and creating assessment and evaluation instruments. A group of four students –  Claudette Brown-Symthe, James Chiarchiaro, Jing Xu, and myself – worked together from remote locations to assemble this blueprint. My role was team leader, designer, and prototype developer.

The strategy chosen included a hybrid structure that involved learners to select a traditional classroom course as a focus for activities, and then to build a generalizable knowledgbase based on the experiences of converting it to an online course. This knowledgbase would then become a cumulative resource for the entire ID staff to use for continuous improvement of DL development. Activities included both individual and group activities, with an emphasis on peer review and discussion. Skills development also included exploration of Web 2.0 tools as optimal learning strategies for certain areas of content and for community interaction, and integration of Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction into online lesson activities.

Reflection: Literature in this class included a call to form activities that were closely analogous to the learning topics. This was a particularly resonant idea for me because I feel that authentic experiences are the ones I remembered best in my own learning experiences. Another challenge in this project was to condense the final report within a prescribed length suitable for submission to a client while retaining the essence of the proposal’s message.

The group effort in this project included diverse levels of ID experience – from nearly none to MS students in their second year. As the team leader, I felt responsible for supporting and facilitating each person’s ability to use remote collaboration tools (Skype), and to establish a baseline knowledge of ID principles among the less-experienced in the group. Of the former task, I found that sharing my online knowledgebase that I had created in IDE-621 Principles of Learning and Instructional Theory was very helpful.

The Appendix of this report included a matrix I created of synchronous and asynchronous media cross-indexed against Types of Learning for the purpose of exploring Supportive Instructional Strategies. A project for future exploration would be to go through this matrix and report findings.