The Process of Learning to Build

Instructional Design

Yup, that was painful! The beginning of Instructional Design was a little excruciating, but I have a wonderful teacher in Dr. Susan Manning. I had already learned the ABCD method of objective construction, where A = Audience (students), B = Behavior (action verb), C = Condition (under which student performs), and D = Degree (to what degree must they perform?) (Heinich, 1995) in my Assessment class. I just didn't get it. It's one of those things. But Susan drilled down into the structural reality of the situation with me. That was really cool. She cared so much that I got it that she went there with me - for weeks! Finally she just took off the ACD parts and left me with the B, the Behavior or action verbs, and then I was able to get it.

Enough! I was able to get it enough.

The trick is in the alignment. The course Objectives must align with the Assessment, as they are measuring the same thing (same verb). And the Activities must also align in that they must be supporting the student (Audience) in learning the Objective which is then measured by the Assessment.

And so, the learning began to be FUN.

All because I have a teacher whose commitment to my learning was bigger than my not already understanding it.

Then Aligning everything together started being fun because I could finally see the order in the chaos of objective constructing. I was continuing the building process because I had laid down the foundation of these strong objectives, upon which to lay the bricks of course building. Finally, my imagination was allowed to kick into gear and I could start really building my mini-course.

In my imagination, I am teaching kids and adults how to create and maintain an online support group. I created this website about the school I wish to build, called The Home School, as my final project for my Assessments class. The Home School is for students engaged in a semi-formal process of emotional healing. In other words, they already have a support system where they live and are looking for an academic curriculum that supports them in their healing process - a Compassionate Curriculum.

I was finally able to start flying again, once I had laid down the objectives. But really, it began to be fun because the University of Wisconsin-Stout seems to believe in constructivism, where - literally - students build their own meaning from the content they are presented with.

Constructivism trusts students. Teachers become facilitators of the students' own making-meaning process. And because making meaning really is inherently fun because it's creative, course design started being fun. Thank Goddess!

Because I am allowed as a student here to create. I am creating an online school that has deep meaning for me, so the process of learning how to do this is also meaningful and relevant - but I'm the one who gets to decide what's relevant for me! Because our assessments are performance-based, we create our final projects according to what floats our boats, what has meaning for us. And that is how the brain naturally learns, by constructing meaning from what was already there in the brain and adding new, related info to it. I have mastered the elements of instructional design enough for it to be fun and meaningful to me.

So it's - finally - fun.