Design & Evaluation of Instructional Materials

Characteristics and selection of various media for instruction and their use in educational settings. Design and production of instructional materials. Analysis of research in the field. Individualized projects and assignments. Application of grounded research and theory concerning learning to design of instructional materials. Structured projects and practical experiences used to transfer design principles and evaluate instructional products.

I took Design and Evaluation of Instructional Materials during my first full semester as a Learning Design & Technology student. We discussed several philosophical perspectives in an effort to define and design effective instruction. We also assessed various psychological learning theories to see how approaches to instructional design can differ across theories. For this course, we followed the ADDIE model to evaluate a problem and design appropriate instruction to solve the problem. As a newcomer in the field, I came to appreciate the hands-on approach to learning in this course.

For our design project, we created a training program which aims to fight the high teacher turnover rate in North Carolina. Our focus was primarily on further educating and training beginning teachers (BTs) so that they can become more confident and less overwhelmed as new teachers. In this training, we sought to mitigate day-to-day stresses such as classroom management, planning effective and engaging lessons, organizing paperwork, and completing administrative tasks. We followed the ADDIE design model to formulate this training program for North Carolina’s BTs.