Hi Class,
The last time we met I had just been given a very short time
frame to get together an initial prototype of instruction for
Millards.
I had collected some data, as you recall, during those early days
when I did not have anything to do. I talked to a Gerontology
professor, and my parents, and I actually observed some of the
sales people working at Millards.
Wow, three days!
I was just going to have to work with what I had. My first step was to start
arranging my data in ways the “Sizing up the Learner” chapter suggests. I
decided to go ahead with the Feel, Know, and Do categories. This is what I
came up with. I was surprised by how much I already had!
Categorizing the data
Feel data
a) Understanding of both positive and negative characteristics of aging
b) Respect for elderly people
Know data
1) Attitudes towards elderly people have changed over history
a) Attitudes in Colonial America toward age
i) Older people were respected, few people reached the age of 65
ii) Older people were given the best pews in church
iii) Puritans instructed youth on how to treat the elderly
iv) Puritans believed old age was a sign of favor
b) The American Revolution marked a change in attitudes towards the elderly
i) Powdered wigs lost favor to toupees
ii) Clothing was tailored to look young
iii) Terms of respect became pejorative
(1) Gaffer
(2) Old Fogy
(3) Codger
iv) Henry David Thoreau made the comment “I have lived some 30 years on this planet
and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my
seniors. They have told me nothing and probably cannot teach me anything.”
2) Current attitudes towards age include
a) Gerontophobia
i) Fear of aging
ii) Mandatory retirement meant mandatory poverty
iii) Literature no longer assigned active and attractive roles to older characters
b) Denial of death common
i) You are as old as you feel
ii) Age before beauty, implying that age is ugly
Do data
1) Ask Millard employees to reflect on their own biases
a) Do you assign positive or negative characteristics of aging
b) Do you think that few, many, or most of the prejudices towards the elderly described in
this presentation are true today? Which characteristics are true and are not true?
c) If you see a fellow employee treating the elderly with disrespect, what would you say or do
to correct the situation?
Then, I got out the “stating the outcome” document and
started in on the objective.
Writing an objective
This was a little harder than I expected.
As you can see I did a lot of crossing out and rewriting to come up with the
draft objective above. When I typed up the objective, I changed it again.
When I actually typed out the objective, I made it clearer in my mind. This
is what I finally decided on for the prototype objective:
Given a brief presentation of the historical changes in America’s attitudes
towards the elderly, examples of biased behaviors that have developed over
time, and the opportunity for personal reflection, the employee of Millard’s
Department Store will identify examples of discriminatory behaviors and
attitudes towards the elderly.
Audience: Employee of Millard’s Department store
Behavior:
Will identify examples of discriminatory behavior and attitudes
towards the elderly
Condition: Given a brief presentation of the historical changes in
America’s attitudes towards the elderly, examples of biased behaviors that
have developed over time, and the opportunity for personal reflection
Degree:
will identify examples of discriminatory behavior and attitudes
Revisiting the C part of the objective
Here I’m thinking about how I want the overall instructional lesson to be
experienced by the learner. I don’t have that much information yet to work
with. For now I’ll use a fairly linear strategy; I will simply present the
critical information (the historical changes in America’s attitudes towards
the elderly). A linear structure will work fine for where I am now and won’t
involve too much work. I’ve been warned to keep things simple at this stage
because so much can be expected to change. I’ll simply present the
information and will ask the learners to think about it in a meaningful way.
Creating a prototype
I create a Powerpoint presentation with simple clip art graphics, nothing
fancy at this time. See the Powerpoint file that follows this instruction.
Stop Reading Now
There are some important things to mention at this point
that might help you get going on your class project. The
first is the importance of getting started, before you even
have much information. Instructional design is not for
procrastinators!
When you look at Estevez's first prototype (in a PowerPoint
presentation following this posting), it is not exactly
Academy Award Winning quality. What it does for Estevez,
though, is provide him with something that other people can
react to. Remember the term "straw man" from the Learner
Analysis chapter? Estevez's prototype acts like a "straw
man". Just by showing people something even sort-of
related, he can get data that helps him create something
better.
Estevez does something that most people already know how to
do - including yourself. He starts by putting together some
content. He does not really know much yet about the
learner, but he does know a little about the content. He
visited a Gerontology professor and learned some good
information. As you will see in the coming story
installments, what Estevez does pull together helps him
move forward with some direction. Out of all the
abstraction that is common to instructional design, Estevez
creates something concrete!
Second, Estevez has trouble writing the objective.
Objectives do not just spill out the way you think they
should, especially when the objectives you see taught in
this unit are nice and tidy and clean. Estevez shows what
really happens, though. In the units ahead, you will see
that the objective he creates here changes even more. This
is not a reason for you to excuse yourself from writing an
objective before you are ready though. It does not matter
how ready you are, most objectives WILL change, it is just
part of the process. You have to start somewhere, so go
ahead and scribble.
Third, Estevez writes a very detailed outline. Notice how
complete it is, it includes sentences. For this class,
follow Estevez's lead; write out as much as you can. Why?
Because it will help you document all the data you have
collected in a way that anybody can understand and that
will also help you remember. There is another reason why
that is important. If you do a really good job of
designing, you will be able to leave your plan for anyone
to use with success. As we move more and more towards
online learning environments, you will find that people
demand well written documents.
I once took over a distance learning class from a fellow
faculty member, now long gone. This was the first time I
had taught distance learning -- ever.
The faculty member who had me take over the class, told me
that everything was there, all I had to do was to go in and
run discussion groups. Well...
Teaching, to this faculty member, much to my huge surprise,
consisted of cryptic outlines, that did not make sense to
me, even with a doctorate in the subject. There were not
books, articles, anything but outlines like:
Distance learning
advantages
disadvantages
Equipment
History
Strategies
small group
large group
individual
.... you get the picture. You probably see the irony ...
what a horrible way to model distance learning!
What was worse, the other course we ran (these were et613
and et615) used the EXACT same outline.
At that point I decided not to be intimidated by this
faculty member any longer.
The moral is ... take the high road. Communicate as best as
you can. You may have to leave it for someone else to
follow, or, you may need to follow it again yourself. As we
have learned, we are all way too overloaded with extraneous
loads in our lives. We DO forget what we did even months
ago,