When institutions have to really think of mastering a new learning management system, the process is indeed challenging to say and what’s more worrisome is the time-consuming process.
Regardless of such difficulties, the end result is good and that is what matters. It will create an opportunity for you to examine and make revisions in the approach of the online component of your course.
Basically, the instructional designers employ a strategy known as backward design which helps to solve instructional challenges. Using a particular set of method, designers first state the desired outcomes of a course or activity, thereafter they identify methods to measure student achievement and finally create the experiences and curate the resources students will use to master learning objectives.
So, as institutes start to considering the end result first, this method increases the likelihood that the instructional strategies chosen will help students succeed in a course. As content, assessments and other learning activities closely support students as and when they are in a process to master learning outcomes, you will find the course has strong alignment and this is what a crucial feature of any well-designed course is.
What is even more interesting to note is that, a new survey of online education leaders from Quality Matters and Eduventures Research indicates that instructional design (ID) support can play a major part in how well an online learners interact with each other in digital classrooms.
Key findings of the research
- The research findings show, wherever instructional design (ID) professionals were mandated to support classroom, it created about 30% increase in student-to-student engagement from those classrooms where ID personnel were not used or a mandated resource in the learning experience used.
- The survey also highlighted that 31% of 182 surveyed chief online officers said their campuses required instructional design input in online offerings. The maximum demand for help in ID comes from large course program conductors. Also, ID is mostly used at for –profit institutions in comparison to four year and two year institutions.
- The common analogy related to non-inclusion of ID given by most participants was mostly due to a lack of resource and to preserve faculty independence in teaching and learning.
In general, instructional design helps in closing the achievement gap. As per another research, conducted by National Center for Education Statistics reveal that about 60 percent of college students complete their degree. And getting a degree becomes even more difficult for students having specific challenges. One of the ways by which colleges can actually help students facing some kind of challenges, institutions must think out of new ways by which the students will get a chance to overcome their challenges.
Instructional design can be really beneficial for these students as it can help bring up the speed of these students. In this regard, Assistant professor and instructional designer, Niki Bray at the University of Memphis School of health Sciences has been using several instructional design tools – chuncking, scaffolding and metacognition.
One of the reasons of student low outcome in online courses has been found to be the difference existing between courses that are administered in brick and mortar environment and that of an eLearning environment. One of the major obstacles that student witness in an online curse is that, there is a sense of emotional and physical distance existing in a learning environments. And this is what presents a major obstacle for online instructional designers to resolve and overcome such a challenge. And, with effective instructional design at place, distance issue can be addressed and potential compensation can be provided to allow learners to maintain their focus and motivation.
So, are you set to include instructional design into your online course to reduce students’ poor outcome rate? Well, the sooner you try it out, chances of declining poor students’ outcome ratio is more and so, we would recommend you to go for it.
As a recommended read on the same topic, we would like you to refer to the ‘Journal of Information Technology Education: Research’.
