Or, should I say…trying to implement.
The main ideas I gathered from Chapter 6 are that implementation is where you find the bumps in the road, or the chinks in the armor of your instructional design product. Through feedback and observation, the instructional designer can gain valuable information on what worked and what didn’t in the lessons, activities, media, and assessments included. I am certainly learning from experience that things don’t always go according to plan.
My implementation plan had some bumps in the road this week. Due to the condensed time frame of this course and assignment deadline, there was not a lot of wiggle room in the implementation plan. Unfortunately, public school education in high school can wiggle a lot. The module that I have been creating for my instructor’s “Dollars and Sense” class just did not fit into his calendar because of other semester changes and slow downs.
I’m choosing to take this is a learning experience and using my best skill: improvisation! In an ideal, real-world setting, I would work with an instructor the semester prior, so that the instructional design product could be implemented the following semester. This is the usual timeline that happens between faculty and instructional designers in higher education, and my assumption is that this would work best for a high school teacher as well.
However, what can I do at this point? I can’t stop time. So, instead I pivoted the direction of this instructional design plan so that we could do an online beta test, with the instructor trying out the module as a pretend student. He knows his target audience well, as he has been in the classroom with high schoolers for nearly 15 years. He certainly knows what works and what doesn’t.
A few of the questions I have asked are:
Were the learning objectives clear?
Will the video content keep your students engaged?
Do you feel that the discussion questions will generate lively discussion, either in the classroom or online?
Does the Four Walls diagram assignment have clear instructions?
Do the sample scenarios provide enough content with out being overly complex?
I asked these questions to gain insight on the attention, interests, and assessment strategies of a high school setting.
References:
George M. Piskurich. (2015). Rapid Instructional Design : Learning ID Fast and Right: Vol. Third edition. Wiley.
Lily Sloan 