1. INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN ESSENTIALS – WEEK 2 LECTURE
This week will be the heaviest week for your learning. Because we have a short amount of time
to cover everything, this week’s readings and activities were designed for you to get a basic
introduction and then you can decide what skills you would like to build up more either during
the class as more supplemental reading, or later on during your own time. The goals for this
week include learning about how learning outcomes, assessments, and content/activities all tie
in together. There are more beneficial ways to actually write a learning outcome, and we provide
some readings to help you learn more about that, but in this course, we just want you to realize
what an outcome is, how it works, and how to tie in the general idea of an outcome to the two
other areas of effective design: assessment and content/activities. Likewise, there is a ton you
could learn about assessment that we couldn’t possibly cover in a 4-week introductory ecourse,
so again, there are readings to get you started on investigating this more in-depth on your own.
Let’s go through an intro to the content through the eyes of backwards design:
Outcomes
These are your goals for students’ learning, written out as what should a student be able to
do as a result of their learning. This is not what you as an instructor are going to cover, but
should instead be learner-focused. Because you are measuring the students’ learning, the
outcome needs to speak to what they are expected to have accomplished by the end of the
course, or lesson, or workshop. If you consider the SMART acronym, you want to be sure your
outcomes are: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. There are a number
of models you could investigate (ABCD model, for example), just find what works best for you.
An example of a solid outcome based on this model—that Nicole actually uses in a campus
plagiarism awareness workshop--might be:
As a result of this library workshop on avoiding plagiarism, at least 75% of
students will be able to identify at least two reasons citations benefit research as
a conversation in order to think critically about their role as consumers,
producers, and critics of information.
If you follow Deb Gilchrest’s model (ACRL Immersion, 2013), it would look something like
Nicole’s adaption of it as:
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As
a
result
of
w
x
will
be
able
to
Verb
or
action
phrase
(Bloom's
taxonomy)
In
order
to
z
2. So my outcome broken down then would be:
1. As a result of library workshop on avoiding plagiarism
2. At least 75% of students will be able to
3. Identify at least two reasons… (Identify is from Bloom’s taxonomy)
4. In order to think critically… (transferable learning)
There are a few other factors to consider when writing outcomes that you will see above: they
are written (often) based on standards, and they take lifelong and transferable learning into
consideration. My outcome was adapted to the new ACRL Information Literacy Framework as
the standards I used. Depending on your teaching scenario, you might use ACRL, or AASL,
Common Core, program or subject-specific standards, or local standards within your library,
campus, etc.
Bloom’s taxonomy (or you can use other taxonomies, such as Marzano, or affective
learning taxonomies) helps you find appropriate verbs for the level of behavior you have as your
goal. For example, in my outcome, “identify” is a lower-level verb in Bloom’s pyramid:
http://juliaec.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/blooms-taxonomy-encouraging-higher-cognitive-thinking-in-primary-school-classrooms/
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3. Because it’s an introductory plagiarism workshop for students who need a primer in good
citation skills, this outcome was to measure students would have a basic level of understanding.
Knowing this, it leads us to assessment…
Assessment
Following the notion of backwards design, your assessment should not be an afterthought, it
should be something you are planning out at the beginning of your ID. As mentioned before, the
purpose of assessment is to measure your learner’s skills, abilities, and attitudes. When you
write your learner-centered outcomes focusing on what your learners should be able to do, you
want to make sure you’re measuring what you intended to measure. This is why aligning your
assessment with your outcomes is so important.
Another issue you want to remember is: who is your assessment for? It’s often glossed
over that assessment is really for the benefit of your learners. Sure, you can use assessment to
demonstrate value or to make larger, library-wide decisions, but first and foremost, it should be
about your learners. Assessment is not evaluation, either. You can use assessment to reflect on
your teaching, but keep this step in your design focused on the people you are teaching. With
this in mind, you can use assessment as a learning opportunity instead of a slap on the wrist;
one way to do this is to focus more on formative assessment rather than summative. See the
Carnegie Mellon reading for more on this, and consider doing more of your own research to
understand effective formative assessment activities.
So you have your outcomes written, but how do you figure out assessments? This is
where Bloom’s comes in handy again. My outcome using “identify” is a lower-level action.
Because it is knowledge and memory-based, my assessments might have more to do with basic
multiple choice quizzes or fill in the blank if I want to focus on remembering. These are not
always effective, however, as you’ll find from your readings, but can be beneficial in some
circumstances. More often, you will want your learners to do more reflection and creation,
relating concepts to their everyday lives. What other activities could you include here that not
only measures their skills, but also provides an opportunity for your learners to experiment and
get useful feedback from you as the instructor?
Content & Activities
After you have your outcomes and assessments planned, you know your destination; so then
how will you get there? If you were giving someone directions using a map, you would want to
give them the most effective route, right? ID is similar, where although we as librarians often
have a lot of information to share, and very often we feel all of it is important, we need to scale
down and give our learners the tools they need to accomplish their learning goals. We only
have so much brain capacity, and the more complex the learning is, the more we will want our
learners to be able to focus more deeply on fewer concepts to succeed.
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4. Putting it All Together
My content for my “identify” outcome could include a brief, 10 minute lecture, followed by a
think-pair-share activity based around finding and thinking about the benefits of citations in
research, using a worksheet that has students find at least two reasons. Then, in the midst of
the class, I could have my learners complete a quick quiz to check for understanding. Instead of
using the quiz punitively if they did not do well, it’s an opportunity for them to see how they are
doing and for me to make sure at least most (75%) of the students are on the same page.
Critical Pedagogy Component
We have a few readings listed this week and a blog activity. One of the articles is something we
wrote for In the Library with the Lead Pipe and is loosely related to assessment through our
impact on teaching and what hindrances we have. If the article interests you, we also invite you
to join us in a #critlib Twitter chat on Tuesday, September 23rd from 8-9pm Central. More
information is linked on the course page.
Now it’s your turn, go ahead and get started on the readings and activities for this week.
We look forward to interacting with you!
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