Corporate Podcasting Expressway

Wikipedia defines Pedagogy as the art or science of being a teacher, generally refering to strategies of instruction. In addition, instructional design is defined as the practice of arranging media to help learners and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively.

I’m currently working on an e-Learning development and I found some nice pointers on eLearning design. The whole arena of instructional design is big!

I have summarised some of the e-Learning Instructional Design pointers below:

• The learning objectives stated clearly for the benefit of tutor(s) and for independent learners within both the material and the tutor documentation.
• The content should take the learner from the known to the new learning in appropriately sized / structured stages.
• The content should follow a clear strategy to achieve learning but need not be linear in design; a didactic approach to learning and the development of electronic page turning should be avoided.
• With regard to the latter, bite-sized chunks helps but in terms of breaking down the content into several leaves, requires good navigation techniques. For example, my company are working on a large eLearning development programme for one of the largest colleges in the UK and the first thing we have done is to ensure an agreed standard for layout and subject structuring. We’ve chosen learning objects rather than clumping all the learning content into one place.
• The content should help the learner to reflect on, review and digest new learning and not just regurgitate facts.  I’ve introduced the concept of ’show, try and summarise’
• The content should test performance to see if learning objectives have been met. This should not be limited to multiple choice questions and similar devices but should comprise a range of techniques. One could also introduce tests or content for reflection and self analysis.
• With regard to the latter, recently, I’ve added a cross-reference back to a syllabus to check to see if learning content does actually match what was just attempted to have been taught.
• The material should motivate the learner.
• The design should stimulate responses from the learner.
• The content should demonstrate how new knowledge and skills can be applied to real problems and situations.
• The materials should include activities for the learner and keep the learner involved – they should generate a desire in the user to learn and to continue to completion.
• The materials should provide a variety of strategies to accommodate different preferences in learning style.
• The language should be appropriate for the target audience.
• The materials should provide useful and supportive feedback based on the learners responses.
• Media (eg. video clips, sound files, animations) should be appropriate to the learning objectives and not be used gratuitously.
• The materials should provide appropriate help facilities for the learner.
• The content should be accurate, valid, up-to-date and without errors.

All-in-all a range of advice but the element of creativity is also essential. This also needs to be combined with understanding the audience. Cartoon’s do not always work but from experience I believe that story telling does.

One final point, accessibility is key for ensuring for example equality. For example, with deaf learners I remember meeting with Deafax. There are some great techniques, for example, when displaying text, following it with additional text in brackets can help to exert the word.

Extending / Formalising Off-line discussion
This is another area of learning that I believe is under utilised.
To a client I once introduced the concept of the ‘Course Home page’. Interestingly, this concept does actually exist inside products such as Blackboard, i.e: establishing related learning resources combined with a discussion forum.  Can student Blogs help?

Imagine what happens in a class-room, both pre and post the teaching session. In their own way students ask questions of each other, relating to homework/coursework or challenges. A forum is a good way to continue these discussions but on-line.

Podcasting and e-Learning
I noticed on a release of Blackboard that we’re working with that Podcasting can be incorporated. I assume this to be a summary of the lecture, say a recording of what took place. Way back (2-3 years ago - a long time in technology innovation terms!) I remember articles being circulated about Universities giving away IPODs to students to encourage them to listen / revise lectures. In terms of instructional design I wonder how much effort goes into the structuring and scheduling of each episode. For example, do they:

Use a standard format ?
Assume that all listener have portable units?
Use some of the instructional design pointers I listed above?
Serve as more than being just a gimmick?
Introduce an element of accessibility (sign-lanuage for video podcasts)?

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