The Impact of Open Source

When designing a distance learning course, the planning process is the most important part because it is the stage in which all of the thinking, outlining, discussions with SME’s, and other items happen. It is the sketch in pencil before drawing in pen. With that in mind, it’s the Instructional Designer’s job to complete this planning process. They must think of the learners, technology, ability of the learners with technology, interactivity, assessments, feedback, and the delivery method (Piskurich & Chauser).

I found an open course that is a good example of careful planning a distance education site and course, the Open Yale Courses website (found at: http://oyc.yale.edu/). For me, I can tell a storyboard was used for this site, and if it wasn’t, then the designer did a good job of organizing the flow of everything. The site is easy to navigate through with clear directions on the Home, Courses, and other pages. The home page clearly states the objective of this site and what it strives to provide to its users. That adds a good element to the site because the users don’t have to search and see if this is what they are looking for; the first page lets them know what the purpose is and then they can decide if it will work for them to continue to explore the site, or to move on to another one. The layout of the site is clean and I would say the designer utilized a site map to decide how the site was going to look. It has calming colors with the font contrasting the background adding for easy readability. There is a lot of information without making it look cluttered as well.

Moving past the looks and beginning thoughts of the site, it continues to appear that the designer followed many of the course textbook recommendations for online instruction. The designer needs to “be concerned with the layout of the courseware and the types of resources available to the students at the distant sites” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek 2009). This designer took that into consideration. When going into the courses, each one provides detailed information about the instructor, the course, and the course structure. Each class page is set up the same, allowing for easy navigation, which shows that the designer put thought into the learners’ usage of the site. They didn’t create it to be too intimidating for the non-frequent technology users. However, it may appear to be a little too mundane for the frequent technology users (Piskurich & Chauser), but when designing, we need to consider the bottom 25% and I think this designer did that, which in my eyes, makes it successful. To create for the frequent technology users would make the content too intimidating for the other group to try and they would be missing out on a good learning experience. The designer did “balance concern for the operation for the equipment with effective teaching” (Simonson, et al. 2009).

The delivery method that appears to have been chosen is the learner-led asynchronous course (Piskurich & Chauser). All of the sessions are accessible for the learner to complete at their own pace. The designer chose the linear-design model for instruction where “students move in the same path through the concepts, topics, and modules, and complete the same assessments and tests” (Simonson, et al. 2009). The material is delivered through course pages and course media. The media has a high bandwidth and medium bandwidth option, which shows the designer ensured that the learners and facilitators have access to the technology selected (Piskurich & Chauser). The courses have interactivity through discussions and participation, which according to our textbook is “one of the most effective techniques to promote interaction in distance education” (Smaldino, et al. 2009). Some courses have activities with groups, while others stick to just discussions. It appears that it depends on the type of course and the courses objectives as to how much interactivity is embedded.

Overall, this site impressed me and is a great example of how pre-planning can make the site and course(s) successful for many, if not all, learners. The other aspect to this site that is impressive is the fact that each course has a survey link and the site has a feedback link. All of the resources we have learned in my Instructional Designer degree put big emphasis on feedback and continually to improve the content. The designer of the Open Yale website conveys that they understand the importance of feedback and is willing to receive it from all angles to keep improving the distance learning experience they are providing. I will certainly keep this website in mind when doing my own planning process as it displays what the resources in this course were discussing.

References

Piskurich, G., & Chauser, J. (n.d.). Planning and Designing Online Courses. Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved October 7, 2010, from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4442081&Survey=1&47=6260654&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek S. (2009). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.