Emmanuel N. Okafor, Jr.
INST Internship
Dr. Shujen Chang
Reflective Paper
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My INST internship was done at San Jacinto College Central Campus. I was under the
supervision of Sue Rodgers, the director of the Interactive Learning Center building and the
Educational Technology Support Services Department. My internship focused on working with a
San Jacinto College faculty to redesign one of his courses. My faculty, Dr. Delwin Long, had a
series of concerns that he wanted me to look into and work with him to develop solutions for.
The first thing I did was to schedule a series of appointments to meet with him. I met Dr.
Long at least four times ranging from 30 minutes to several hours to discuss his expectations and
to find out more about the nature of his course problems. I treated my meetings with Dr. Long
like interviews, I asked questions to learn about background information and other information
that would help me determine the approach to take to meet Dr. Long’s needs.
From my discussions with Dr. Long, I could now narrow his lists of concerns and start
looking for the best solution. His concerns include:

His department doesn’t have a printing budget and he needed to have color images for his
test to effectively test his students. He has been spending his own money to do that which
resulted in him being reluctant to make changes to the test since it would require him to
redo the copies again.

Dr. Long’s second problem was that his students’ performances were down. He couldn’t
afford to make copies of all his notes for his students. He needed a way to make the notes
available to the students without him having to spend money.

Dr. Long’s third major problem deals with his student’s lab performance. The lab has
limited hours of operation so his students can’t adequately practice and prepare for their
lab exams. He needs a way to make the lab information available to them for longer
periods of time.
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
Dr. Long also expressed an interest in online testing. He has a lot of things on his plate
already and he wants to look at alternative means of testing that will be less stressful to
him.
In the design phase of the instructional design process, I examined all the available
educational technology within San Jacinto College. I knew that incorporating Blackboard
Learning System would solve at least 70% of the problem. Blackboard was a solution to making
course information available to students at all time. It is compatible with most audio, video and
animation components, it also has discussion boards and virtual classrooms that promote
interactions within a course. For online testing, Dr. Long was looking for a stable program that
would allow images to be included in both the question and answer portion. I looked at Question
Mark Perception, Par Test and Blackboard. After carefully examining the pros and cons of each
assessment tool, I decided to stay with Blackboard. Question Mark Perception and Par Test were
excellent assessment tools but they did far more than what Dr. Long wanted. The server that we
use to launch Par Test online has several limitations that would affect a class the size of Dr.
Long’s Biology 2401 courses. I decided to use Blackboard assessment tool because it was the
simplest available assessment tool and it required the least amount of training for the Instructor
and most importantly, it is already within the Blackboard environment so there would be no need
for importing or exporting test data.
The most challenging part about my internship was learning to use different technologies
before incorporating them into my course design. I had to study Blackboard’s Instructor’s
manual and the administrator’s manual. When I became more comfortable with Blackboard, I
trained Dr. Long on how to use Blackboard. For me, I think it’s important to know the
limitations of the tools you use in the design stage of the instructional design process. I studied
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all the different tools within Blackboard like the test manager and pool manager for assessment; I
learned how to use the virtual classroom and the lightweight chat. Learning to use these tools
made more a more informed designer that took advantage of all the versatile tools available
within this learning system.
Another important thing I learned doing this internship is to be flexible and easy for people to
talk to. In working with Dr. Long, I had to accept that I had no control over how he structures his
class but I can always make suggestions. I made suggestions for him to have clearly stated
objects. My responsibilities to Dr. Long during the internship were the typical work for an
instructional designer. I made suggestions on how technology could be incorporated into a
course and Dr. Long was the content expert.
The development phase of my internship was the most meaningful in terms of things learned
and the most difficult in terms of the time spent creating different course content. In the
development stage, I had to read and follow the guidelines for creating a course in Blackboard.
This guideline was developed by the Distance Learning Office at the District Level. The
Blackboard template placed heavy emphasis on accessibility issues.
In the development phase, I took all the course materials that Dr. Long gave me and
converted them to PDF so that all students could have the access to them. Currently I have
PowerPoint slides as PDF but all PowerPoint will be converted to Impactica which makes
smaller sized compressed files than PDF.
In the development stage, I setup all the settings for Blackboard. What I enjoyed the most
was designing the course banner in Photoshop. I also enjoyed selecting the navigation buttons.
The area of development that took up the most time for me was creating online tests for Dr.
Long. I had to do this portion twice. The first time I did it, I left the image resolutions of each
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picture too high. The images ended up being too big for the computer screen so I had to reformat
the images again in Photoshop. Converting the tests to electronic format will make it easier now
for Dr. Long to edit questions and personalize the pool.
From this internship I have come to have a greater respect and admiration for what
Instructional Designers do. Instructional Design is not all about using technology to find
solutions to educational problems or the application of the systematic design process.
Instructional Designers have to be good customer service people to deal with different
personalities and to be able to communicate and work effectively within a larger group.
I learned from this internship that not all performance related problems need training. Task
analysis or needs assessment are critical at the start of the instructional design process to ensure
that your solution addresses the actual problem. Dr. Long’s problems had little to do with his
ability to teach or the clarity of his course. The gap in performance was created by institutional
policies. His department had no printing budget which resulted in him not being able to provide
his students with photocopies of lectures and notes thus their performance suffered. His lab
problem is also the result of a departmental/ institutional policy.
The solution I came up with was the result of my needs assessment. In searching for a
solution I looked for something that would make it possible for students to have unlimited access
to Dr. Long’s lecture notes and test reviews at no additional cost or burden to anyone. I also
looked for a testing system that would eliminate the stress of grading for an instructor. My main
focus in a testing system was one that is easy to use and modify which would give the instructor
more confidence in technology. My choices of each educational technology tool were based on
ease of use for instructor and students and the total savings in terms of money and time for
instructor and students.
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Dr. Long and I agreed to measure the success of my solution by observing his student’s
grades and by getting their feedback through the end of the semester evaluation forms. We plan
to compare the grade averages from this semester to previous semesters and we plan to continue
research on ways to improve his student’s performance.
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