Module 2: Overview

Evaluating & (re)Designing the Learning Experience

Module 2 Design Process

Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • Contrast formative and summative evaluation with developmental evaluation.
  • Conduct a developmental evaluation of an educational resource that contemplates the need, learners, context, project requirements, and Merrill's First Principles of Instruction to engage the adult learner in solving authentic real-world problems or tasks.
  • (re)Focus your instructional revisions or adaptations on identified skill and knowledge gaps of adult learners.
  • (re)Define learning objectives that are specific, outcome-based, measurable, and describe learner behavior.
  • (re)Design instructional activities to promote learning and performance.

Topics

Key topics covered in this module include:

  • Developmental evaluation
  • Designing effective, efficient, and engaging learning experiences using Merrill's First Principles of Instruction:
    • Problem-Centered Lesson Focus
    • Activation Phase Activities
    • Demonstration Phase Activities
    • Application Phase Activities
    • Integration Phase Activities
  • Defining learning objectives that are:
    • specific, outcome-based, measurable, and describe learner behavior,
    • aligned to College and Career Readiness Standards, and
    • classified to desired levels of learning based on Bloom's Taxomony

Context Summary

In this module, we will consider how evaluation during the design process can improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and appeal of the instructional materials we design and develop. We will conduct a developmental evaluation of the instructional materials designed and developed by participants in a prior Designers for Learning cohort and stored within the Adult Learning Zone on the OER Commons website Links to an external site. to support instructors and learners in adult education programs. We are conducting this developmental evaluation as a means of refining and expanding our roster of open educational resources based on the evaluation and design criteria we will cover in the final two modules of the course.

We are taking a two-fold approach to developmental evaluation in this course. First, you will select, review, and evaluate your chosen lesson to examine the extent to which the materials meet our evolving understanding of this instructional design project's needs, challenges, and opportunities. After you select a resource of your choice, you will examine the extent to which the learning experience is appropriate for the assumed need, audience, and context. You will consider the potential efficacy, efficiency, and engagement of the designed instructional activities using Merrill's First Principles of Instruction, a set of fundamental principles that can lead to effective, efficient, and engaging learning experiences. Second, you will redesign and develop a new lesson either to (a) make modest adjustments to the lesson's content (e.g., different instructional activities, new assessment, sharpened objectives, etc.), or (b) make more substantial changes (e.g., redesigning the lesson for an entirely different learner, context, and/or different learning environment). Expanding up the analysis of needs in Module 1, you will contemplate your learners and their skill and knowledge gaps, and identify authentic real-world problems or tasks that should be the focus of instruction you are designing.

Relevance to Practice

Design is an iterative process to create a learning experience that effective, efficient, and engaging. As designers, we take countless steps to analyze the needs and constraints, synthesize to generate possible solutions, and simulate our best model, but it is important to periodically pause and ask, "Will this work as intended? Is there a better way?" This active reflection is part of a developmental evaluation. An analogy to evaluation shared within the Delft Design Guide is "You check how you look in the mirror, and consider whether you are dressed suitably for the weather" (Boeijen, 2013, p. 19).

Dirksen (2011) describes a learning experience as a journey. Your learners begin the journey with a certain level of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and they should leave the journey with new and improved capabilities and skills that they can use in their daily life or work. At the end of the journey, your learners should be able to do more rather than merely know more. And you can help your learners to have a great journey by selecting right instructional activities that require their active involvements. To design effective learning experiences for your learners, think about the real-world problems or tasks they will encounter as they pursue their future aspirations, and draw on their life experiences to make the learning experience relevant and engaging.

Key Terms and Concepts

  • First Principles of Instruction: The teaching principles that increases effectiveness and efficiency of student learning and satisfaction by engaging them in solving meaningful problems.
  • Problem-centered approach: Presenting instruction is in the context of real-world problems.
  • Activation phase activities: The activities that are used to activate relevant cognitive structures of the students by recalling or acquiring a structure for organizing new knowledge.
  • Demonstration phase activities: The activities that are used to demonstrate the skills to be learned that is consistent with the content.
  • Application phase activities: The activities that are used to enable the learners to apply new knowledge.
  • Integration phase activities: The activities that are used to encourage learners to integrate new knowledge and skills by reflecting on, discussing, or defending the new knowledge or skills.

Module Design Credit