I have been debating whether or not to update my Kindle book “Designing Instruction Using Layering Services”. Unlike my other book which was first published by a traditional textbook company for courses in educational technology, Designing Instruction was focused more narrowly and explores the combination of two more unique topics – teachers as designers and what I decided to call layering. These topics probably seem more niche to most educators and not the type of thing likely to be emphasized in at least undergrad courses in educational technology. I get that. However, I think the topics are becoming more mainstream and would be beneficial should I find a way to explain how they provide a way to think about and engage in other emerging class activities most educators recognize.
Teacher as designer. I use the phrase “teacher as designer” as a contrast to educators who focus on implementing commercial instructional materials. In my writing, I draw a distinction between information resources and instructional materials. We all take in information resources all of the time and we do learn from such experiences. We read and watch informative news and information sources; television, newspapers and magazines, and YouTube videos. The difference between exposure to such resources and exposure to instructional materials is the addition and more probably more relevant for my purposes the embedding of elements intended to encourage and assist the reader/viewer in the processes which increase the understanding, retention, and application of the information presented.
As educators, we might interact directly with students to develop interest in a new topic, discuss the material, and encourage learner reflection on their own related experiences. Similar goals can be addressed by educators and instructional designers by adding experiences to instructional resources created by others. Questions can be asked face to face, offered through a workbook or worksheet, or embedded before, during, and at the conclusion of digital content. The identification of essential material within a source document can be identified with highlighting and additional content can be added to supplement the work of another author as a “boxed” insert. Discussion topics can be recommended. My point is that a designer or potentially, a teacher functioning as a designer, shapes the activation of relevant existing knowledge and past experiences, motivates, directs processing, and adds opportunities for formative assessment as value-added elements to information resources. Commercial curriculum materials are created by designers who add such elements in the creation of textbooks and other learning materials. Educators both assign these resources and extend them with other activities and resources.
So, if teachers already add elements to commercial content, what does an exploration of teacher as designer add. I would suggest two advantages – a) a purposeful approach and b) probably a broader collection of what these additional elements might be.
Connections – I see the discussion of teacher as designer as related to two recent popular modifications of traditional practice. The first is the movement to “ditch the textbook”. Searching on this phrase will provide multiple recommendations for books on the topic and recommended strategies. An alternative or at least related movement is OER (open educational resources). This movement proposes the use of digital and print resources that are in the public domain. The issue of the cost of commercial materials is a partial motivator for both movements. OER could apply to educational materials that are just available at no cost, but also proposes that educators can fashion effective learning resources themselves and possibly share them with each other.
The second recent innovation is the concept of “flipping the classroom”. The core goal here is to free classroom time for interaction, guidance, and explanation and offer the exposure to content (think lecture) as an outside-of-class activity. I tend to think of this as the expectation that students should read the textbook before coming to class, but I admit this is a bit cynical. The idea is that teacher presentations need not be required to take up valuable class time. Most often implementation requires the preparation of video content made available to students and expected to be viewed before coming to class.
In addition to saving class time, video can be argued to offer other advantages – e.g., students can review if necessary, when content is viewed can be determined by the individual learner. Designing a resource for independent learning (a video in this case) allows and requires some different considerations. My personal interest is in adding elements to video that can individualize the learner experience (more on the specifics when I discuss layering). Such individualization is not possible in a group setting or if possible far less efficiently.
Layering – I use “layering” as a way to describe the specific elements that differentiate an information source and an educational resource. I am interested in both how these differentiating elements are intended to influence the cognitive activities of the learner and how these elements can be added in a digital environment (e.g., web pages, YouTube videos). My interest extends to one more important issue. How can designers (teachers) add these elements without violating the copyright and possibly revenue generating expectations of the content creators (e.g., think the inclusion of ads on a web page)? The copyright issues do not necessarily apply in all layering opportunities, but would be relevant when a teacher finds web content (video, or text/images) that would be useful as a learning resource.
The approaches I emphasize in my writing focus on online services that allow an educator to designate an information resource and then add elements to these resources for the purpose of improving the effectiveness of the original resources. The service then basically creates a layer that is combined with the original content and sent to the learner online in way that does not impact whether ads are displayed or hits are recorded if the content creator receives compensation based on how many times his/her content is viewed. Aside from the legal and ethical issues, the services simply offer the educator as designer ways to improve the educational value of the targeted resources.
I can make this concept more concrete and I understand that it is important to get to the level of just what this looks like. First, what are these elements I keep talking about. My favorite example is a question. Questions are versatile and offer ways to encourage many important cognitive activities – what do you already know about this topic, did you understand what you just read or saw, can you think of a personal example of the concept just described, on and on. Other examples available from the services I have investigated include – comments and annotations (simply a way for the designer to offer additional information, link to additional content, or suggest an application of an important concept), highlighting, and discussion prompts resulting in the recording of the thoughts of multiple readers/viewers. These systems may allow the collection of the student responses to these prompts for educator review and possible evaluation. Different services depending on cost (some are free) and the type of online material they are designed to support (text/images vs. video) offer different elements and capabilities.
My writing – My book explains these concepts and explores the more general process of design. The topics attempt to create a mindset for educators attempting to show that learning happens because of the cognitive activities of learners and while teachers cannot control these processes there are ways to influence and change the probability these necessary internal processes happen by providing learners specific external tasks. Topics may be as specific as what are the benefits of questions and what types of questions influence specific cognitive processes. How can learners generate questions themselves and use them for review?
Of course, I would like educators to spend the $3 necessary to acquire my Kindle book. However, if these ideas are intriguing and you are not interested in the book, I provide some videos demonstrating a variety of the online services I recommend. If you are interested in exploring, the videos should get you started with both paid and free layering services.
