EDUC 766
Printing a Photo Poster was a project for EDUC 766: Instructional Strategies and Assessment Methods as part of an Instructional Design Certificate at The University of Wisconsin–Stout. This project continued the work started for EDUC 765, Print Production: Properly using the Poster Printer. In this course, I designed activities and assessments using the objectives created in EDUC 765. As part of the conclusion of EDCU 766, I produced a small section of the unit, Printing a Photo Poster using Storyline 360. Click the image above to view the course.
Overview
Plano ISD Academy High School is a project-based, STEAM-focused 9–12 school. There is a high need to produce large-scale visual aids for AHS learners’ presentations, PLC meetings, staff meetings, and meetings with stakeholders. While AHS learners have some training on creating visuals, there is a lack of training regarding successful printing using our poster printer. Our Campus Technology Expert oversees the printer, but her understanding is limited to basic printing, paper replacement, and ink management. Additional training is needed to teach how to prepare visuals to avoid pixelation, resizing files to avoid paper waste, and patching photos to create visuals.
Instruction would address these problems by providing learners with the necessary steps to create graphic posters, photo prints, and patched photo prints. The training would focus on some of the problems AHS learners, facilitators, and staff currently face when trying to print such as pixelation and paper/ink waste.
The primary audience is learners at Plano ISD Academy High School with a secondary audience of facilitators/staff at Plano ISD Academy High School. At AHS, there are approximately 450 learners across grades 9–12. The student body is composed of 37% girls and 63% boys. The school is project-based with a focus on interdisciplinary STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) curriculum. The learners frequently use Chromebooks and occasionally use Macs. There are 32 facilitators and staff members. Ages range from 20s to 60s and 72% are women, 28% are men. 90% of the facilitators and staff have masters degrees. Facilitators and staff frequently use Macs and occasionally use chromebooks.
The training will be self-guided using our campus LMS. AHS Learners and facilitators are used to this LMS, so the familiarity will help streamline the learning. In addition to a familiar format, another benefit of the course being self-guided is that learners can skip sections they are already familiar with and focus on specific sections. Finally, learners will be able to quickly reference sections when they’re printing.
Alignment
Course alignment is important in creating effective learning experiences. The chart below shows the structure and alignment of this Print Production course. Terminal objectives indicate overarching objectives and enabling objectives support these objectives. I developed the assessments and activities based off of the enabling objectives.
Sample Activities
For this course, I applied Horton’s Absorb-Do-Connect model. At the beginning of each unit, learners experience “absorb” activities in the form of presentation, text, and video. Learners practice their learning in the form of “do” activities. In this self-paced course, “do” activities are learning checks at the end of each chunked section. See the assessment section below for samples of “do” activities from this course. Finally, “connect” activities encourage learners to transfer their learning to their lives. At the end of each unit, there is a connect activity guiding learners to reflect on how to apply their learning.
The sample activities below are connected to the terminal objective: Given a computer, poster printer, and Adobe CC, print a poster of photo that is correctly formatted. Specifically, the activities below address the following enabling objectives: 1) Identify the crop tool in Photoshop, 2) Identify the levels tool in Photoshop, and 3) Explain how the levels tool in Photoshop is used.
Absorb Activity— Learners watch a presentation on the crop tool.
Absorb Activity— Learners watch a presentation on the crop tool.
Absorb Activity— Learners watch a presentation on how to find the levels tool.
Absorb Activity— Learners watch a presentation that walks through the steps of using the levels tools.
Click the image above to see the course in action.
Assessment
This course is broken into three units defined by their terminal objective. As this is a self-paced course, feedback needs to be computer-generated and automatic. Therefore, all assessment in this course is in the form of multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, matching, and hotspot questions. Throughout the course, learning is chunked into sections guided by the enabling objectives. After each content section, there are checks for understanding where learners can test their knowledge. As stated above, these are examples of “do” activities from Horton’s Absorb-Do-Connect model. For this assignment, I focused on developing a small section of the Printing a Photo Poster unit. Below are sample questions and the feedback provided when selected.
Reflection
I developed this project as a continuation from my previous course at UW-Stout (EDUC 765). While the previous course was focused on learning models, instructional theories, and learning objectives, in this course (EDUC 766), we focused on the development of activities and assessments to support the learning objectives. In this course, we focused heavily on Horton’s Absorb-Do-Connect model which categorizes activities based on how learners will engage with them. Taking the learning objectives I created in EDUC 765, I first developed absorb activities as a form of direct teach. In this course, learners will click through presentations, read text, and watch videos to absorb the content. Since each objective needs to be measurable, in this self-paced course, do activities are in the form of learning checks (multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, hot spots, and matching). Finally, connect activities transfer the learning to learners’ every day lives. I decided I wanted a reflection at the end of each unit for connect-activities.
In designing this course, I grew as an instructional designer by having to problem-solve and think through best methods for a self-paced course. In order for a self-paced course to be successful, assessment needs to be clear and honor all levels of learning (Bloom’s). In addition, since I am not able to give individual feedback in a self-paced course, assessment questions’ feedback must be informative.
In thinking about Universal Design for Learning, I decided a couple of things early into the design process. First, I decided to design content in both presentation and text format as well as video, so that this both assists people with a variety of learning modalities and people with disabilities. Second, in thinking about adult learning theory and the UDL principle of optimizing individual choice and autonomy, I designed the course such that learners can skip ahead to focus on a specific section they want to learn more about. In addition, the content is chunked so that learners can go back and reference material from the course as needed.