Designing the Instructional Message (Week 9)

     In this chapter, Morrison, Ross, and Kemp give a detailed explanation of designing the instructional message. They divided the process into three parts: preinstructional strategy, signaling the structure of the text, the use of pictures and graphics.

     Preinstructional Strategies:

     At the beginning of every lesson, there is a warm-up or an icebreaker that helps the learner to prepare for the lesson. The authors mentioned four different procedures of preinstructional strategies. The first one is pretest which includes several questions about the upcoming instruction. The second strategy is a set of objectives which is prefered by more traidional instructors. It is to give a brief oral listed summary of what is coming. Third strategy is the overview, it is a written summary of what is expected. The last strategy is the advanced organizer which is more abstract. They also mentioned about graphic organizer which I have a lot of varieties. Fx:

     Signaling the structure of the text:

     It is all about gaining attention through how you write the instructional text; the headings, words, italic type, etc. We can manipulate the learners’ cognitive process by organizing the structure in a specific way. The authors mentioned “three critical design elements” that creates a finely printed instruction. First one is a set of particular components like words which helps the learner become aware of the structure. Secondly, the harmony of the structure is important which also helps the learners’ recall of information. Third, the content and the learners’ previous knowledge should have something in common to acquire the text clearly.

     The use of pictures and graphics:

     Showing something how to do is always better than giving just a written instruction. In this part, the authors mentioned using pictures and graphics in order to help the learner to acquire the necessary information easily. Here pictures and graphics are facilitators of learning. It also helps me to understand everything clearly, for example, if I am making an IKEA bookcase, the text in the instructions is not enough but the pictures at the end of the page help me to do it. Or in my class, whenever I show a picture about a picture of what I taught, it helps my student to comprehend better.

Instructional Objectives and Writing Performance Objectives (Week 7)

Instructional Objectives

Instructional objectives are a tool to design proper instructions, activities, and resources in order to evaluate the learning. It is a guide showing the appropriate way to the learner. Objectives part in instructional design grouped into three domains: cognitive, psychomotor, affective.

Cognitive Domain:

Cognitive category mostly related to knowledge, information and another kind of aspects of learning. In this part, Bloom’s taxonomy comes forth where the intellectual activities (cognitive objectives)  arranged from simple to advanced: Knowledge (to remember), Comprehension (to comprehend), Application (to apply), Analysis (to analyze), Synthesis (to create), and Evaluation (to evaluate).

Psychomotor Domain:

The psychomotor domain includes the skills about psychical learnings. The cognitive process helps the development of psychomotor skills such as cycling, driving etc. Heinich, Molenda, and Russel granted a taxonomy in terms of the degree of coordination: Imitation, Manipulation, Precision, and Articulation.

Affective Domain:

This area contains the objectives about learners’ psychological situations such as to feel, interest, love a certain value. We all have a psychological level related to knowledge that we acquire. It is the less used area especially in writing performance objectives. Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia presented a taxonomy which includes Receiving (give attention), Responding (will to take action), Valuing (showing a positive or a negative attitude), Organizing (to determine relationships among values), Characterizing (to accept a value as a part of one’s personality).

Writing Performance Objectives:

Writing Performance Objectives firstly orients the instruction and facilitates the design process. Writing part specifies the criteria of evaluation. It can provide a huge contribution to the motivation of the learners and ease the planned studies. To categorize the instructional objectives ensures them to be understood effectively. Categorizing also helps the instructors to know which skills have to be taught.

Assessing Learning from Instruction (Week 6)

                While I was reading “Assessing Learning From Instruction” text, a lot of shapes, charts, and graphics were spinning in my head. So I am going to express myself mostly with these kinds of instruments for this time.

The Differences Between Criterion-Referenced and Norm-Referenced Assessments