New Media Technology multi-media manual Planning Your Instruction, Analyzing your Learners

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Planning Your Instruction

Instructional designers spend a great deal of time planning instruction before actually creat- ing any instructional materials. This step is vital whether you are a teacher planning classroom activities, a writer developing a textbook, or a course developer for online instruction.

Before you begin creating your online library instruction tutorials, take the time to thoroughly identify and organize the information you want to deliver. Remember that “library instruction is best-recieved when it is course-related, and specifially assignment-related.”3Assuming that you have already identified a genuine need for online instruction on the topic of your tutorial, the next step is to analyze your learners and estab- lish instructional goals.

Course Goal: 1

2

3

1. Acquaint students with strategies for effective Internet searching.

Course Objectives:

1.1

 

 

 

 

 

1.2

 

 

 

 

 

3.1

1.

Students will be

 

 

 

 

differences

 

 

different search engines.

 

Google

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yahoo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Altavista

 

 

1.1.1

 

 

 

 

 

1.1.2

 

 

 

 

2.

Students will be able

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.Students will be able to construct a Boolean search.

4.Students will be able to explain the concept of stop-words and identify the more common ones.

5.Students will be able to identify signs of unreliable information.

Analyzing your Learners

Consider the age, experience, cultural back- ground and technical expertise of your learning audience. Are they a homogenous group with similar goals or do they vary widely? What are learners’ probable goals in completing the on- line tutorial? What aspects of online instruction might they prefer to classroom instruction? How will they use the knowledge they gain?

Once you have successfully answered these questions, you are in a good position to create online instruction that will be both meaningful and enjoyable for your learning audience.

Clarifying Instructional Goals/Objectives Think about your instructional goal for the learn- er. Does it match the probable goal of the learner

him or herself? Now determine what the learner will need to be able to do to demonstrate that the instruction has achieved the stated goals. Write out instructional objectives in the form of activities that the learner will be able to perform when finished with the tutorial. This exercise will help you structure your tutorial to the greatest advantage of your learner. It will also assist you in evaluating whether or not your completed tu- torial meets all of its instructional objectives.

Finally, make an outline of the topics you’ll cover over the course of the tutorial and think about the most sensible order in which to present them.

It may also be useful to list the skills that learn-

ers will need to master before they can success- fully complete the different sections of your tuto- rial. Looking at this list may bring attention to the areas that require the most attention and may even suggest topics of instruction that weren’t in the original outline. For example, if students must know how to construct a boolean search string in order to complete a tutorial about your library catalog, you may wish to include a sec- tion or even a separate tutorial on the subject of boolean logic.

Consult “Tips for Developing Effective Web- based Library Instruction” by the ACRL for more recommendations.4

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Contents Multimedia Tutorial Production Guide Table of Contents Is Streaming Media the Right Choice? Looking AheadPlanning Your Instruction Analyzing your LearnersDetermining Available Technology/Skill Sets Software/Hardware RequirementsScript Creation Visual Media Creation Image Creation for BeginnersMore on Image Creation Flash AnimationVideo Production Audio Media Creation Synchronizing Your Tutorial with Smil Tutorial.smilSynchronizing Your Tutorial with Smil Publishing Your Tutorial Online Usability Evaluating Your TutorialEvaluating Instruction Thanks and Credits For More InformationReferences Other Resources