John McLeod's List: Instructional Design

• assessing affective attributes in Higher Education
• his goal is to explore "how e-technologies are being used, or could be used, to meet these challenges"
• Whereas in Higher Education, it is still not very widespread to assess affective outcomes, after graduation, assessment often focuses on teamwork and networking skills, creativity and values which fit to the profession.
• the author explores the nature of assessment and its association with selection and evaluation
• Norm-referenced assessment processes
• work place though, the need to rank applicants for selection purposes is obvious
• Criterion-referenced assessment processes
• For affective learning, portfolios are the key innovation in supporting development and judgment.
• The author explores another form of assessment: construct-referenced assessment
• socially constructed descriptions of practitioners, who describe conditions for new members to enter the community
• often contain 'value sets' (
• Ipsative assessment emphasizes the notion of self-assessment, self-reflection, personal-professional development and lifelong learning
• The author argues, that this form of assessment should be more widely acknowledged in Higher Education in order to foster the development of students' values and attitudes. Portfolios, e-portfolios and other technologies such as wikis could help to better support this development in the future.
• He outlines that "evaluation can be achieved on a group-wide basis and that this avoids some of the really difficult issues in assessing values and related affective outcomes" (p. 396)

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• The successful instructional designer should:
• • Conceptually and intuitively understand how people learn.
   
  • Know how to connect with an audience on an emotional level.
   
  • Be capable of imagining oneself as the learner/audience member.
   
  • Be obsessed with learning everything.
   
  • Brainstorm creative treatments and innovative instructional strategies.
   
  • Visualize instructional graphics, the user interface, interactions and the finished product.
   
  • Write effective copy, instructional text, audio scripts and video scripts.
   
  • Meld minds with Subject Matter Experts and team members.
   
  • Know the capabilities of eLearning development tools and software.
   
  • Understand related fields—usability and experience design, information design, communications and new technologies.

• Great list of competencies rather than credentials for an instructional designer. I agree that if someone is thirsty to learn, then they will find a way whether it is through formal education or through informal means - John McLeod on 2009-07-08

• And what happened to performance support? In the 1990s, many people expected performance, to shove technical training into the shadows. Yet eLearning, blended learning, and virtual worlds seemed to have elbowed performance support into oblivion. Recent research finds that this is not the case. Performance support is stronger than ever; it simply hiding in plain sight, having taken on a new form.

  • looking at where performance support has gone, and suggesting that it has just changed form, rather than disappeared.
• What I am envisioning is real time communication, generated by the ‘performer’, using online tools.
• task is being performed, and in an effort to improve/enhance/problem solve, etc, a question is posed electronically: “who’s the expert on this? what should I watch out for? do you have a record of? can I borrow the template for?” This moves the issue from the individual performer being ‘watched for errors’ and suffering their consequences, to the performer as collaborator initiating the network of collective intelligence towards continuous improvement.
• oday, the greatest leverage in corporate learning comes from building on-going, largely self-sustaining learning processes.
• People who read my book on Informal Learning generally agreed that most learning at work is informal but that most corporate investment goes into formal learning.
• Knowledge workers are responsible for their own learning. Instead of taking whatever was pushed at them, they pull in what they need to know in the form that seems most appropriate. Knowledge workers are their own instructors. They are also their own instructional designers. And they are becoming their own PS consultants. The challenge presented to Learnscape Architects is making self-service learning simply, relevant, attractive, and cost-effective.

  • Interesting idea, there is so much information available now a days, that knowing how to pull in what you need to know from all of the resources available, including access to people who know how to do the task etc, is invaluable
• Remember the original premise of PS, making information available to workers instead of forcing them to memorize it? That’s how we use Google and corporate wikis and instant messenger.
• Learnscape architects have implemented miniature versions of the internet behind corporate firewalls that provide all of these things, from peer-rated FAQs to wizards, on-line help desks, and best practices repositories.

  • Some examples of 'Learnscape' performance support
• George Siemens and others have given up on the idea that knowledge resides within individuals’ heads; it’s collective intelligence.
• A powerful form of performance support is asking someone who knows. Expertise locators direct workers to the person most likely to have the answer they seek. Presence awareness software shows whether that person is online, mobile, in a meeting, or available by phone. Instant messaging facilitates swapping brief questions or asking if the person has time to deal with a more complex question.

  • This totally reminds me of the challenge with the help desk at BCPC, they need to move more into a LearnScape mentality, rather than such extensive training
• Overall, what are corporate blogs, feeds, aggregators, wikis, mash-ups, locator systems, collaboration environments, and widgets, if not performance support?

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