A Designer’s Log Case Studies in Instructional Design- P11:This book deals with the design of distance education at an emerging dual-mode university, that is, a university offering courses both on-campus and via distance education or online in a variety of manners. It was written from the point of view of an instructional designer (ID) working alongside university professors in designing their courses for distance delivery | for competency skills mastery and other observable activities. It is also important in large organizations that large numbers of individuals receive the same training and be brought to the same competency threshold. Maybe that was the problem Faculty see themselves as being responsible for arousing intellectual curiosity in their students of developing minds and sharpening intellects but they definitely do not see themselves as mere trainers aiming to reach objectives. So how applicable is instructional design to higher education Now there s something to think about. Afterwards we returned to examining linkage between course contents from one week to the next as well as their sub-division into exercises. This activity seemed to hold more interest for the professor. Our analysis of her course contents revealed a certain level of redundancy in the didactic resources she provided to students. We saw some overlap in the proposed readings and recognized that students did not need to read 40 to 50 pages of text to be able to attain the weekly general objective. Thus we spent some time analyzing her intended course content as well as its format. As mentioned her course content was mainly comprised texts to be read sometimes articles sometimes book chapters or excerpts from books sometimes the professor s course notes. We then proceeded to distribute these contents throughout the course according to the already-identified general objectives in conformity with proper ISD practice although running counter to a well-established faculty practice of first identifying the contents and then identifying the objectives. As we made our way through her content we analyzed linkage between elements and always playing the devil s advocate I asked her questions about her reasoning behind various choices of elements and why certain elements were linked. She told me that this was the first time she had ever gone through this process with anyone else being used to working without feedback .
