Learning Instructional Design

As the great philosopher Willy Wonka once said “So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.” Wait a minute. Strike that. He was a movie character, not a philosopher.  There is a lot to learn about instructional design. My primary learning goal last week was to manage my time better and not be rushed to meet due dates. It is Saturday morning, and I’m working on my blog post. Obviously, I didn’t achieve my primary learning goal for the week. However, I am learning about instructional design and formulating some recommendations for faculty developing an online course. I have learned that I have opportunity for growth as an online student. I get easily distracted and put off attending to my responsibilities as a student. I read this week’s linked articles, but when it comes time to apply the concepts to deliverables, I have trouble differentiating the concepts. In this coming week I am going to create a personal study guide where I can log insights an...

I have always been interested in learning. As a kid in elementary through high school I just wanted it to be easy! I just needed to know what was required and how to keep my parents and the teachers happy. My learning objective was learning enough to get reasonable grades while being able to maintain an active "play" schedule. My learning outcome was progressing through the educational system in an orderly fashion with good enough grades so as to not draw much attention to my academics. I was pretty good at it. Somewhere along the way, in my early thirties, I discovered that learning had value and what you know makes a difference in what you receive. The more I knew, the better I understood why people do what they do and how things work.  I could use the ability to learn and the knowledge that comes with it to make my and those that I interact with life's better. Pretty powerful stuff.