The past year I have been teaching IDD 315 (Introduction to Principles of Instructional Design) at BYU-Hawaii. I’ve been working with Dr. M. David Merrill to make this course task-centered, peer-interactive, technology enhanced. We’ve developed some pretty interesting things so I thought I would share.
IDD 315 is a class designed to teach the principles of instructional design. Being such, it is important the class itself be an example of effective design. Dr. M. David Merrill’s task-centered instructional strategies serve as the backbone for the instruction being created for this course.
The class is designed around a number of tasks that increase in complexity and depth as the semester unfolds. This task-centered approach is based on the study that mental-models provide a more sustainable form of memory. A mental model is a set of related ideas—a holistic representation of the parts, relationships, conditions, actions and consequences of a complete problem or task (Jonassen).
The students are introduced to their first mental-model when I demonstrate the analysis of a piece of instruction. The students then analyze another piece of instruction similar to the one I demonstrated. For example one of the first articles the students read is Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction. Before the students read the article I showed the students a piece of instruction identifying its elements of activation, demonstration, application, and integration. I briefly explained each the four aspects of first principles during the demonstration and drew on the student’s natural instincts to develop amendments to the instruction that would improve it.
After class, the students read First Principles of Instruction and critique another piece of instruction. By demonstrating the task first, the students were given exposure to the content in a meaningful way, they knew what they would be expected to do with the content they would read, and were able to see the real world applicability of the information. After reading the article students were immediately able to apply the knowledge in an activity, solidifying the knowledge into a mental-model.
Another important facet to the class is that it’s peer-interactive. Peer sharing, peer collaboration and peer critique require learners to test their mental models, to refine their mental models, and to share their ideas. These activities create flexible mental models, facilitate learners’ ability to apply their knowledge in new situations, and provide opportunities for learners to work together as they will be required to do in the workplace following their education (Strobel & Tillberg-Webb). Therefore, Following the students attempt to complete the given task, students post their assignment on blackboard for all to see and in groups of three to five, compare each others critique.
In groups each person has to defend his or her analysis and explain why they made the decisions they made. By sharing, the groups understanding of the task is broadened, their opportunity to review the content reviewed, and their perspective of analysis refined. The group takes the best aspects of each persons’ work and together submit another analysis. Because everything is posted for everyone to see, I am able to give feedback to individuals or groups at any point along the way.
Throughout the course, we go through three classes of tasks. The first class being centered around First Principles of Instruction, the second centered around Levels of Instructional Strategies , the third centered around task-centered instruction.
The tasks very, but the format stays the same. The students observes a task, are exposed to the topic components specific to the task, they solve the problem, post their response, meet in a group and compares responses with each other.
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