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Instructional Design

Demystifying Online Group Projects

By Eileen Horn, Eric Peloza
March 11, 2019

Introduction

Heather Herdman photo
Heather Herdman, PhD, RN

I was one of those students that always hated group projects because I invariably ended up with somebody who didn’t do their work and I figured I could do it better myself…I always thought students would feel the same way. But I was encouraged to try it out and it’s been great.

Like many students and instructors, Heather Herdman, PhD, entered into the fray of online group projects with trepidation; but, with input from other colleagues in the program and instructional designers, she made the commitment to give it a try.

We all know that students have responsibility for making group work successful and instructors have little control over what students do or don’t do, but we also have a responsibility to provide the best environment for the group work to occur. As instructors, there are things we can do to change the conditions of group work and impact the trajectory to increase the likelihood of success. Today we’re going to take a close look at Heather’s approach to this project as a way to uncover keys to successful teaching with online group projects.

You can think about your work related to online group projects as fitting into three phases: planning, designing, and doing.

Planning

An online group project that isn’t well planned is going to become an unstable learning experience. Students will be more frustrated, asking more questions and offering more complaints. This serves as a reminder that we really need to think about which course or unit objective can be met with a group project. In Heather’s graduate-level course there is a clear connection between the group project and a career in health and wellness. When we asked about the goal of the course, Heather said,

Students should be able to both analyze someone’s research and also conduct research. In health and wellness employment situations graduates will have to work with teams. They have to work with people from different departments, often with people that have very different backgrounds. You’ve got to have a way of bringing those people together. So this course’s project is kind of a nice way to introduce people to the fact that you’ve got to learn to work with people that may come at things from a very different perspective than you do.

As we dive deeper into this case, you’ll see that Heather does an excellent job of explaining this connection to students.

Spending time upfront planning and designing your group project makes it easier to implement. You make it easier for yourself to manage the course and for students to succeed. It is critical to know why the group project is part of the course, because making sure it’s really clear in your mind will help when it comes to communicating the value of the project to students.

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Thinking of Entering the World of Instructional Design?

By Eric Peloza
January 3, 2018

Instructional Designer Activities
Source: Ashley Kontos; Pintrest (Click to Enlarge)

Growing up, I never heard a guidance counselor mention the instructional design field when describing career opportunities. As an undergraduate student thinking of a career in education, I thought the choices were limited to working as an instructor or as administrative staff. After a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work, I found that I have a passion for instructional design. I’d like to share how I found myself in the middle of a great instructional design team at UW–Extension’s CEOEL, some things I learned about the instructional design field while coming from an outside perspective into the instructional design community of practice, and some tips I picked up that may be of help to those interested in pursuing a career in instructional design.

Community of Practice

I began my entry into the instructional design community of practice as a student worker. I remember realizing that instructional design was a career I was interested in because of how excited I was to do the very basic tasks (e.g., link checks, quality assurance) required by my role.

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Learner-Generated Instruction and CBE Micro-Credentials

By Justin Mason
December 18, 2017

Comic. Three men under the banner “A public service message from the Society for the Preservation of Normal Looking Higher Education.” The man on right says, “Friends, please consider these two questions. 1) Are learners capable of creating quality instructional content? 2) Would a university ever validate learner-generated content by associating it with a credential?”

“In other words, if a student passes a course that contains learner-made content in its curriculum, should the student learn a university backed credential? The answer, of course, if NO!!! I mean, in what topsy-turvy universe does learner equal teacher? This spells one thing: TROUBLE!!” The man in the middle says, “It also spells mutiny.” The man on the left says, “Students aren’t qualified to teach. Their work contains inaccuracies and lacks substance. This has all been documented before. Now someone in the competency-based micro-credentialing world wants to rehash the idea of learner-generated, or worse, wiki-generated, instructional content and pretend it’s something new.” The man in the middle says, “Please, we thought of that and didn’t do it years ago!”
The man on the left says, “Frankly, it’s naïve to think that instructional content made on a wiki, whether by learners or interested professionals, could lead to any of the following… Curriculum that is up to date, transparent, and validated, a student experience improved by user testing, a way for industry to directly voice its needs, lower development costs (leading to more affordable credentials), or empowered learners.” The man in the middle says, “This is open-source constructivist nonsense at its worst—some real ds106-level malfeasance!” The man on the right sighs and says, “No one understands you when you talk like that.”

Call to Action

At the University of Wisconsin–Extension CEOEL, we are trying something new: a pilot course that uses learner and user-generated instructional content. The experimental pilot will be offered through our competency-based micro-credentialing platform the University Learning Store. You, along with students and other interested professionals, can help us build the course!

The subject of the course is Human Resource Management: Creating a Training Plan. An unfinished draft of the course is available for editing now on Wikiversity (a sibling of Wikipedia). We sincerely hope you will take a look and contribute.

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Create_a_training_and_development_plan

Why Are We Doing This?

There are several reasons we believe learner- and user-generated content is worth investigating in the context of micro-credentialing. First and foremost, we want to offer learners affordable credentials that employers value. Instructional content that is user-generated yet also validated by experts might be a way to offer learners high-quality university-backed credentials at a price they can afford.

A second reason has to do with giving industries and employers a voice in the education of potential future employees.

Third, wouldn’t it be great if there was a sustainable way for higher education to create OERs (open educational resources)?  Learner- and user-generated wiki content could do that!

What Is the University Learning Store?

A first in nonprofit higher education, the University Learning Store offers a practical and affordable way for learners to earn credentials that hold real value in today’s job market.

The University Learning Store is a partnership among a prestigious group of universities to create a new kind of credential. ULS credentials…

  • Are competency-based and verified by employers
  • Use authentic assessments to prove learner proficiency
  • Can be completed in just days or weeks
  • Contain competency summaries that tell employers exactly what you know and can do

 

* For instance:
Keen, A. (2007). The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

How Faculty and Instructional Designers Can Work Together

By Justin Mason
April 4, 2017

Drawing of a red-haired, bespectacled professor in a green turtleneck saying "hello".
Meet Athena, philosophy instructor.

 

Athena is an associate professor of philosophy, and this summer she’ll be creating an online version of one of her courses.

Her chair/dean has asked her to work with an instructional designer, but Athena hasn’t worked with an “ID” before. She feels a bit nervous about it, so she asks a few of her colleagues for some friendly advice.

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Designing for Self-Directed, Self-Paced Learners

By Eileen Horn
February 24, 2017

BLE 200 Homepage
Homepage sample illustrating the standardized layout and support resources that contribute to student success.

At CEOEL, we are starting to work on developing a new degree for UW System’s Flexible Option. Before embarking on this new journey, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the last one. I had the opportunity to work with a great group of faculty and instructional designers this past year while developing UW–Extension’s first degree, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA). In this post, I’ll highlight just a few ways that this degree incorporates research-based recommendations for designing and delivering learning experiences to self-directed, self-paced learners. These practices address factors such as learner characteristics, assessment methods, and presentation of materials.

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