Synthesize: Your First Design Decisions

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Learning Objectives

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

  • Establish a scope and focus for your lesson that meets the project’s requirements and Design Guide
  • Align and implement objectives to the Career and College Readiness Standards (CCRS)
  • Make decisions regarding how learning outcomes will be assessed
  • Search, access, and evaluate existing Open Educational Resources (OER) for use in Adult Education

Topics

Key topics covered in this module include:

  • Choosing a lesson scope and topic
  • Defining lesson goals and objectives
  • Reviewing methods to assess learning outcomes
  • Aligning performance objectives to standards (CCRS and CCSS)
  • Searching, accessing, and evaluating Open Educational Resources (OER)
  • Understanding Creative Commons Licenses

Context Summary

Welcome to Module 2 where you will continue to build upon the instructional design framework started in module one. Now that you have contemplated learner personas, learner needs, and the instructional context for our design challenge, you will continue to explore the design of instructional experiences to meet those needs, contexts, and constraints. As an instructional designer, you will make many decisions that plot your course of action. This module will provide you with the tools and resources needed to assist you in making your first lesson design decisions, including what will be taught, and how the learners will be assessed.

As an instructional designer in this service-learning course, one of your first deliverable will be to develop a Design Proposal in Module 4 that lays out a plan for your lesson. We will review the Design Guide for this project that will help to ensure consistency in the lessons we create in this course. Mapping out your first design decisions from the Design Guide in this module will help you to plan what the participant will learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time provided. In later modules you will answer other important design questions. What type of learning activities will you use? What type of development strategies will you implement? Are you meeting adult basic education standards? Where can you get resources to support your lesson?

Relevance to Practice

In this module you will have an opportunity to build upon the work you completed in Module 1 in order to identify the scope and objectives for your lesson. In both K12 and Adult Education in the US, there has been move toward standards-based education. The current standards for Adult Education are the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) that are based on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) developed for K12 education. The goals of standards-based education are to communicate clear expectations for learners, and to use content standards to improve curriculum and instruction, including the professional development of those developing and implementing instruction aligned with the standards.

The CCRS were developed as a nationwide framework for Adult Education programs developing or updating their educational standards. This means that the performance objectives are identical from community to community. That being said, helping learners achieve the same learning outcome may require different instructional approaches, supports, and be grounded in unique contexts. While instructors may be teaching similar lessons, there is often a need to localize learning materials and resources.

As the educational standards for Adult Education are applicable nationwide and dovetail with the standards for K12 education, instructors, instructional designers, and others have already begun shared their learning materials online under a variety of copyright licenses. We encourage you to design by the expression, “there is no need to reinvent the wheel”. In this module you will determine whether or not there are materials readily available to adapt to meet your lesson plan goals, or if you will need to develop materials “from the ground up”. This is a daily reality in the field of instructional design.

Key Terms & Concepts

  • Lesson topic
  • Learning objectives and outcomes
  • College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS)
  • Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
  • Open Educational Resources (OER)
  • Creative Commons Licenses

Module Design Credit

License

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Instructional Design Service Book Copyright © 2016 by Designers for Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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