Design Practice: First Impressions

Exercise.pngExercise Overview

We begin this module with a quick individual exercise to give you an opportunity to consider your first impressions about one of the open educational resources designed in previous cohorts for our adult learners. Please take about 10-15 minutes to complete this self-guided design practice exercise.

Check.pngExercise Instructions

In this course, you will be evaluating and adapting/redesigning a lesson that was completed by course participants in one of our prior Designers for Learning instructional design cohorts. You are able to choose any lesson from the roster of open educational resources in Designers for Learning's Adult Learning Zone group on the OER Commons website. To help you narrow your focus to a lesson of interest to you, please complete the following:

Adult Learning Zone Roster of Resources

  • Click on the titles of several of the lessons to view the lesson plans and instructional materials created by the instructional designers. For example, as shown in the example in the screenshot below, Janet Lee was the author of a lesson about job interview basics.

Adult Learning Zone View Resource

  • After you skim the content of several lessons, select one that grabs your attention. Please take a few minutes to more closely examine the lesson plan the instructional designer developed. Also, click through to view any links embedded within the lesson for other lesson materials the designer included with the lesson plan (e.g., YouTube videos, PDF handouts, etc.).

  • After spending a few minutes in this initial review of the lesson you selected, reflect on the following prompts:

    • What is grabbing you about this lesson?
    • Why did you pick this lesson over the others?
    • What is your initial impression about the lesson?
    • What is going on within the lesson plan?
    • What are you thinking about as you review what is presented?
    • What will the learner be doing during the lesson?
    • What activities has the instructional designer included for the learning experience?
    • Would you want to take this lesson?
    • Would you consider this lesson to be effective at providing instruction on the topic?