Category: LRNT 524

Engaging in the design thinking process was a challenging and rewarding experience that proved to be invaluable in developing important skills needed as a novice instructional designer. My team and I worked collaboratively,  focusing on relationships to provide a solution for teacher burnout when teaching online. By reflecting on the successes, challenges, insights, and breakthroughs that I experienced while developing a design solution with my team, I was able to create a set of design principles that will guide my future design practice.

 

1. Use your strengths – Each person brings their own set of strengths to the table. Hiemstra & Van Yperen (2015) suggested that using your strength-based approach increases intrinsic motivation, effort, and self-efficacy. Utilizing our strengths and recognizing our weaknesses supported the success of our design solution. By identifying our strengths, we built our confidence, ensured our skills were being used and felt a sense of accomplishment.

 

2. People come first – The person’s needs should motivate the solution; you should design to improve how the person or stakeholders’ needs are being met within a specific context. Brown (2009) describes the process of design thinking as being user-centric, which means designing with the user’s needs, and preferences in mind (as cited by Schallmo et al. 2018). Meredith (n.d.) stated, “gaining insight into how their motives and behavior are connected to complex systems is central to designing for human experience” (p.2). Understanding the people you work with promotes a positive human experience. 

 

3. Do not let your biases and perspectives narrow your solution – Acknowledge your point of view and recognize how it influences your decisions when developing a solution. Be open-minded to other people’s points of view and be open to the perspective they bring, specifically how they can offer an inclusive solution. Meredith (n.d.) suggests looking for a balance of perspectives.

 

4. Feedback makes your ideas stronger –  Using feedback from users, designers, and stakeholders can be beneficial when revising and synthesizing design solutions. Yilmaz & Daly (2014) claimed that feedback could be used “as a source of expertise-technical expertise and guidance” (p.6). They also concluded through research that feedback pushed students’ concept development. 

 

5. It is okay if your idea is not liked by everyone -Disagreeing on solutions promotes growth. It leads other designers to question your thinking, allowing the team to dig deeper for solutions. Do not be afraid to speak up and suggest ideas that may seem different. Schallmo et al. (2018) encouraged designers to acknowledge all ideas no matter how unrealistic they are initially perceived. 

 

6. Keep it real and practical – When defining problems and asking design questions, designers should define solutions that are “appropriately scaled to time, resources, and student experiences” (Meredith, n.d. p. 11). Creating a solution that costs too much to implement, takes too extensive time to implement, or requires skills stakeholders do not have can result in the solution not being used. A good solution needs to fit within the user’s abilities and routine. Additionally, Schallmo et al. (2018) emphasized the importance of addressing the user’s needs and real-life problems.

7. Relationships are invaluable – Creating a professional working relationship with the designers and stakeholders creates open conversations, respectful feedback, and growth. It allows you to work collaboratively and share ideas in a safe and open space. Understanding the people you are working with creates the opportunity to facilitate effective design solutions (Bruce & Docherty, 1993).

 

References 

Bruce, M., & Docherty, C. (1993). It’s all in a relationship: A Comparative Study of client-design consultant relationships. Design Studies, 14(4), 402–422. https://doi.org/10.1016/0142-694x(93)80015-5

Hiemstra, D., & Van Yperen, N. W. (2015). The effects of strength-based versus deficit-based self-regulated learning strategies on students’ effort intentions. Motivation and Emotion, 39(5), 656-668. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9488-8

Lieberman, R. (2020, January 18). How to use design thinking in the UX design process. Medium.https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-use-design-thinking-in-the-ux-design-process-e33c4f11a6be

Meredith, D. (n.d.). Accountability for Anticipating Design Outcomes. The Professional Association for Design. https://www.aiga.org/sites/default/files/2021-02/Accountability%20for%20Anticipating%20Design%20Outcomes.pdf

Schallmo, D., Williams, C. A., & Lang, K. (2018, June). An integrated design thinking approach-literature review, basic principles, and roadmap for design thinking. In ISPIM Innovation Symposium (pp. 1-18). The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Schallmo-2/publication/326259516_An_Integrated_Design_Thinking_Approach-Literature_Review_Basic_Principles_and_Roadmap_for_Design_Thinking/links/5b41fd34a6fdccbcf90b620d/An-Integrated-Design-Thinking-Approach-Literature-Review-Basic-Principles-and-Roadmap-for-Design-Thinking.pdf

Yilmaz, S., & Daly, S. R. (2014). Influences of feedback interventions on student ideation practices. In 10th International Design Thinking Research Symposium (DTRS), West Lafayette, IN. https://docs. lib. purdue. edu/dtrs/2014/Impact/5

This week’s reflection consisted of looking at Instructional design tools and the superpowers instructional designers have.

I started this activity by brainstorming design tools and superpowers I use frequently as a teacher. I highlighted design tools that I felt were most important to me and superpowers I value the most. I arrived at the conclusion that as a teacher/ novice instructional designer I value connection/relationships, inclusion, and empathy in my practice.

My visual represents the connection between empathy, understanding students’ learning needs, and building safe, inclusive spaces for learning. In my practice, when designing lessons, units, or curriculum, I ensure that I understand my students’ learning needs by building relationships with my students, so they can share about their learning and take risks to learn. Creating strong foundational relationships with my students allows me to be more adaptive and responsive to their learning needs when creating learning opportunities. 

Stefaniak (2021) states, “instructional design is not limited to a linear approach for designing and developing instructional solutions; it is complex, and heavily influenced by contextual factors that are uniquely situated in relation to the project goals”. When teaching and developing learning opportunities in elementary schools, many factors influence how learning is carried out. Factors that influence design decisions as an elementary teacher include; mental well-being, if the student is tired if the student has eaten, whether the student has a stable home life or if the student feels safe. Due to these many factors, my learning environments are structured to have the flexibility to account for the numerous factors that influence learning. 

Dicks and Ives (2008) highlight considerable social skills instructional designers use to build relationships. Some of the notable social strategies were; establishing credibility, validating their expertise, asking about needs, aligning perspectives, managing resources, and using learner feedback. While not all the social strategies apply to elementary education, they can be adapted and applied to elementary education. Their research looks beyond the core steps of ID models and analyzes the entire situation, explicitly looking at ways to fill the gaps in between. Through analyzing their findings, Dicks and Ives (2008) claim “instructional designers do not do their work by following established models, nor by basing actions on theory” instead they believe instructional designers have a “large repertoire of social and cognitive skills” which are used to guide their design practices. Having solid relationships with my learners allows me to utilize social and cognitive skills to guide and design students’ learning, filling the gaps between various steps in ID models.

 

References 

Dicks, D., & Ives, C. (2008). Instructional designers at work: A study of how designers design. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie, 34(2). https://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/26421/19603

Stefaniak, J. E. (2021). Documenting Instructional Design Decisions. Design for learning. https://edtechbooks.org/id/documenting_decisions

 

This week in the MALAT program as a cohort, we began to deepen our understanding of Instructional Design (ID), specifically, looking at how to engage with and how to apply ID models in our field of work. Each design model is unique and focuses on different aspects of design. While each model follows its own unique core design principles, many ID’s follow the same overarching paradigm. Bates (2015) tells us that ADDIE (Analyze, Develop, Design, Implement, and Evaluate) is a well known process that has been used to guide alternative design models. The ADDIE model is rigid and front loaded.(para, 12)  Another process of ID is Agile. The Agile process emphasizes the flexibility and often parts of the course are designed and implemented part way through the course to allow for feedback from students. In the Agile process, instructors are able to build a course that reflects students’ values. (Bates, T. 2015, para. 4)   Understanding the differences between different design processes is an important first step before deciding what model to use. When choosing a design model it is important to consider the different features that each design model allows for. Douasy. T.A. (2017) tells us, 

“ As instructional designers, we often follow the same process (ADDIE). However, through modeling, we customize the process to meet the needs of our instructional context and of our learners, stakeholders, resources, and modes of delivery. Models assist us in selecting or developing appropriate operational tools and techniques as we design”. (para. 9) 

Douasy highlights that each model allows for unique customizations to account for format, context, and non-instructional gaps that need to be addressed. 

Reflecting on my personal experience using ID this quote from Brown, A. H., & Green, T. D. (2018) stood out to me “Instructional designs range in complexity from making minor revisions to an instructional tool (e.g. flashcards) to the creation of a completely new curriculum”. (para. 15) This quote has prompted me to further reflect on the role ID has played in my career as a k-12 teacher. To my surprise many ID concepts are ingrained into everyday practice. Understanding by Design (UbD) is a common ID used in teaching. UbD is often referred to as being a backwards design process. When lesson planning teachers are taught to start with the end goal in mind, “what do we want our students to be able to do after this lesson. Lessons are  then planned around learning objectives and assessments are created to reflect the learning objectives. Once the assessment and learning objectives have been decided then the “how” of the lesson is planned. While using the UbD model is common practice in teaching there are other aspects of models that I query the role of other ID in the role in K-12 education and hope to be able to learn more about each model, finding ways to make other ID models applicable to the K-12 system.  

 

References 

Bates, T. (2015). Chapter 4.7 ‘Agile’ Design: flexible designs for learning,. Teaching in the digital age. BCcampus.

Bates, T. (2015). Chapter 4.3 The ADDIE Model. Teaching in the digital age. BCcampus.

Brown, A. H., & Green, T. D. (2018). Beyond teaching instructional design models: exploring the design process to advance professional development and expertise. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 30(1), 176-186.

Dousay. T. A. (2017). Chapter 22. Instructional Design Models. In R. West (Ed.), Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology (1st ed.)