Reflections on Instructional Design
I have been teaching for 15 years and have taught students ranging in ages from 5 – 50, in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions in three countries. I love teaching but sometimes vehemently dislike being a teacher. As I read more and more about Instructional Design, I find myself thinking quite critically about the courses I am teaching at the moment, about the students I am teaching, about where they are from, what they already know, what they need to know, what they respond to best as they take that journey and how this all falls back to me.
The models of Instructional Design describe for me these areas that I have begun to critically consider and fill me with inspiration and desperation at the same time. The perfectionist in me acknowledges that in my teaching there is enough improvement room to moor the titanic. The realist in me knows that there just isn’t enough time to follow a comprehensive ID model to develop all my classes. The pragmatist in me is asking for the ‘cheat’ – what is the shortcut? What is the ‘easy’ way to incorporate and develop?
Maybe it is a matter of prioritising one of the letters in the ADDIE model. In this course the model I will observe is ‘adDie’, or ‘aDdie’ or ‘addIe’.
Maybe just the process of deciding which letter to capitalise, to focus on, is enough.
Amidst my uncertainty, I do know that with an awareness comes a responsibility and that come Monday, as I step in front of 24 hormone-riddled-ninth-graders to continue their stop-motion animation unit I will be reconsidering what comes next.
In fact, as I click ’save’ on this blog post, I have already begun.
