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Peer Review

Instructional Design Resources

Reviewed:
Mar 1, 2021 by Instructional Design and Technology
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 4.8 stars
Content Quality: 4.5 stars
Effectiveness: 4.5 stars
Ease of Use: 5.0 stars
Overview:

Explore thie

Instructional design has been undergoing significant changes resulting from developments in areas including pedagogy, learning science, and technology. Explore this resource site—a collection of all EDUCAUSE resources related to instructional design in higher education.

There are 3 key resources plus links to over 5,000 additional resources including

Briefs, Case Studies, Papers, Reports, Blogs, Case Studies, Presentations and

seminars, book reviews, and more dating back to 2000. Some are available to

Educause members only. Educause offers a series of "7 Things You Should Know About ..." briefs each focusing on a single technology. The brief discusses what the technology is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. The briefs are good for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic.

The 3 key resources are:- Leveraging Instructional Designers for Research on Teaching and Learning:  Challenges and Opportunities.  This is only available to Educause members, but membership is not difficult.

- 7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT Developments in Instructional DesignThis is one of the "7 Things You Should Know About ..." series. It presents a scenario and then discusses instructional design in seven topics: What is it?, How does it work?, Who's doing it?, Why is it significant, What are the downsides?, Where is it going? and What are the implications for teaching and learning?

- 7 Things You Should Know About Universal Design for LearningThis is another of the series -- this one focusing on Universal Design for Learning, a framework for the design of material of value to a wide range of students.

EDUCAUSE is a treasure trove of resources, and, especially more so, with the transition to  online , hyflex, or blended learning delivery. This site is strongly recommended for anyone in education role.

Type of Material:

Collection of resources for instructional designers, instructional technologists, and faculty, .

Recommended Uses:

Resource guide for students, IDs, and instructional technologists.

Technical Requirements:

 up to date  browser and internet

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Familiarity with ID concepts.

Target Student Population:

College General Ed, College Lower Division, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Teaching, instructional design and technology experience would be helpful.  Basic grounding in adult learning is helpful.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:

Excellent and thorough discussion of topics in  the learning field. I would suggest adding more case studies. Further, with the pandemic, the roles of IDs and Instructional technologists may be more fused in some institutions-and , typically, these professionals get training in both areas (with a more specific concentraion on a particular area). It may be helpful to look at additional examples of this field in action.

Concerns:

None.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:

These resources provide information at a variety of levels from the new instructional designer to those exploring later topics. Documents can be downloaded for offline use.Each document is richly tagged making it easy to identify related information.

It's an excellent resource directory and highly recommended to anyone working -or aspiring to work in these fields.

Concerns:

Resources are text-based. There is no interactivity in the three key resources or in any of the others I sampled at random.  Nor was there any use of media.

Also, as mentioned above, they would be more valuable if they were organized in some way that recognized the relationships between resources from introductory to more complex.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:

Very easy and clean documents. Well organized and very easy to read. 

The documents are clearly presented making desired information easy to find.  Chunking, clear headings, color, font size, and a 2-column layout combine to make documents easy to learn from.

Other Issues and Comments:

I suggest looking at the recent spotlight articles for further grounding in designing best learning experiences for students.

See the highlights below.

 

 

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