ELearning/Course design/Context
Context is the circumstances, conditions, and background within which development, learning, and application take place. Learner and instructor characteristics, the learning environment, and just as importantly, the environment in which learners will use their newly acquired knowledge and skills, make up context. Any particular strategy that works well within one constellation of variables may work poorly when the constellation is different.
Development context, including time, budget, and resources will impact your design in a very real way, and so it is best to identify these upfront so we can plan and execute a realistic, as well as high quality, learning product.
Learning Context
Learner and Instructor Characteristics
Human factors are the wildcards of any system. We are unique bundles of physical, emotional and intellectual traits. Therefore, it’s reasonable to expect that some people are better suited to teaching and learning online than others. Millions of students are voting their preferences by learning asynchronously online – with flexibility proving to be the crucial motivator (Aslanian & Clinefelter, 2012). Other factors like lack of direct contact with others, inconsistent communication with instructors, and motivational challenges appear to be taken as “givens” students must adjust to. Online college enrollment accounted for 27% of total U.S. enrollment in 2013 (National Centers for Education Statistics), down from approximately 31% in 2010. Online workplace training and continuing education enrollment, measured by spending, was about $50 billion in 2015.
Faculty, on the other hand, are decidedly conflicted (Allen & Seaman, 2012). Nearly two-thirds of professors say they believe learning outcomes for online courses are inferior or somewhat inferior to those for a comparable face-to-face course. Those with a greater exposure to online education have a less-pessimistic view. Instructors at schools with online offerings are more positive than those at institutions with no such offerings. Faculty with direct online teaching experience have, by far, the most positive views towards online education, with two-thirds believing online to be the same or superior to classroom teaching. Even so, this leaves a sizable number concerned with online outcomes. As we argue elsewhere, instructors who adapt to the differences of working online and apply proven online methods do indeed create learning that is at least equal to classroom teaching. The difference lies in design and execution and not environment.
Learning Environment
Learning takes place in a wide variety of environments. The first distinction we make is between formal and informal learning. Our focus is on formal learning, historically taking place in classrooms where students and instructors gather together in person. Much less common is the correspondence course where students and provider interact by mail. Today’s options include the online environment whether synchronous (live) or asynchronous. Hybrid courses attempt to bring the best of both live and online instruction together in a single course.
Briefly, here is a summary of identified advantages and limitations of classroom and online course environments: (NEED TO ADD STAND-ALONE)
| Table 1. Advantages and limitations of online and classroom instruction | |
|---|---|
| Classroom | Asynchronous Online |
| Advantages | |
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| Shortcomings | |
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Hybrid instruction encompasses both face-to-face and online learning. As such, it can be said to offer the “best of both worlds” in that a variety of learning preferences can be accommodated, flexibility for students and faculty is increased, and the format is effective across a broad spectrum of content and learner types (U.S. Dept. of Education, 2010). It is not simply a combination of online and classroom instruction. Rather, it focuses on optimizing achievement of learning objectives by applying the “right” learning technologies to match the “right” learning to the “right” person at the “right” time (Graham, 2005).
Refer to the Delivery mode article for more extensive information on hybrid courses.
Learning environment restrictions
Factors beyond design principles often play a critical role in determining the learning environment. They are the realities, or felt realities, of managers, instructors, and technologists that impose real restrictions on good design practices. A few examples:
- "Working adult learners can only engage with their coursework on weekends, therefore we discourage the use of synchronous or semi-synchronous learning activities."
- "Students hate working in groups and they are hard to manage."
- "Our employees need small learning chunks of a half-hour or less."
- "Our employee are experts; they don't need practice."
- "Our policy is that students can upload a maximum file size of 1 MB."
There are work-arounds for most issues if administrators and others are willing to work with designers, but are often handed down as edicts. Negotiation skills prove a valuable assets in these situations.
Application Context
With the modern emphasis on “real-world application” in education and training, it is important that courses be designed with an eye toward the environments in which learners will use their new knowledge and skills. This means understanding the physical, social, and cultural environment even if it is society in general. More often, however, the designer needs to understand and relate the occupational environment in which students will eventually work. Occupations have their own skillsets, organizational structures, physical conditions, norms and values, political and social realities students will encounter. In the same way that authentic assessment seeks to reflect real-world application, authentic instruction exposes students to the realities of the occupational setting.
“Occupational reality shock” is a certainty for many newly graduated professionals, especially those frequently portrayed in television and movies (Jones, 2003). This shock can have deleterious effects on work-related commitment, career expectations, and on-the-job attitudes (Dean et. al., 1988). A recent Google search indicated that most has been written about reality shock for teachers, nurses, occupational therapists, accountants, police, correctional workers, and information technologists. Our experience tells us instructional designers also face reality shock when working for large organizations where design processes often dictate that individuals be responsible for only small pieces of the whole. Those working in educational settings must often compromise on important design principles, as the faculty instructor largely calls the shots.
Development context
The development context is all about resources, specifically available time, budget, technology, and skill. Resources serve to enable and limit the design and construction of the instructional product. Large organizations often have many resources available while small firms and individuals may need to make do with less or acquire necessary resources in the marketplace. In any case, we are all interested in a reasonable return on the investment (ROI). "Reasonable" ROI will differ significantly between stakeholders, but we know that resources are always limited and we need to know and understand those limitations before design or construction begins.
Time and budget
In work, there is almost nothing that focuses the mind like an impending deadline or, even worse, a spent budget. It is beyond the scope of this module to address time and budget considerations, but that doesn't mean these are not essential skills for anyone wishing to make a reasonable return on their development investment. An old rule of thumb is relevant here.
Figure 2 represents the relationship between time, budget, and quality. Each side of the triangle represents the ideal situation. We see that only two of the three can be accomplished at the same time. The further we move away from one side (following the lines extending from the three dots), the less representative of the project it becomes. The three points represent the extreme of two sides, as we see below.
- Top point represents quick turnaround, low cost, and low quality
- Lower-left point represents quick turnaround, high cost, and high quality
- Lower-right point represents slow turnaround, low cost, and high quality
Refer to the Project management primer for a more indepth look at the cost-time-quality matrix. A few other resources:
- Estimating development time by Kapp & Defelice (2009)
- Estimating time and budget by Don Clark (2010)
- The elusive ROI for learning through technology by Jack and Patti Phillips (2014)
- Return on investment basics by ASTD press (2006)
- Learning ROI by Accenture Consulting (2003)
Technology and skill sets
Although available technology and skill sets come into play during the building phase, it’s important to articulate those you anticipate being available and those you do not. Resource limitations will impact your design parameters. To do this, you would complete a table similar to Table 2 below.
| Table 2. Sample technology and skill sets | ||
|---|---|---|
| Role | Technologies Used | Skill Sets |
| Subject matter expert: laboratory supervisor | literature search tools, laboratory equipment, analysis software | literature search, experimental design, analysis |
| Instructional designer | HTML editor, elearning design tools, LMS tools | needs analysis, matching activities to objectives |
| 2D/3D Graphics artist | graphics, rendering tools | drawing, tool use |
| Animation specialist | animation, graphics tools | tweening, tool use |
| Applications programmer | programming languages (C, PHP, Ajax) | efficient programming, complex manipulations |
| Videographer/Audiographer | audio, video recording devices, editing tools | noise reduction, editing, synchronization |
Conclusion
Three types of context are important for designing instruction. The learning context, or physical and temporal settings in which learning takes place, has the most immediate impact on design because fundamental differences call for diverse teaching strategies. Application context is also important because students need to apply what they learn in the real world, including societies, professions, and organizations. Finally, the development context impacts the entire process and must be known before design and construction begin.
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