George Veletsianos, PhD

Tag: instructional design professionals

Digital education in times of climate crisis: beyond content

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On July 15, 2022

In learner experience

In an earlier post, I suggested that one way our field could respond to the climate crisis is by helping people understand that climate change will impact them. Stephen Downes takes that to mean “looking at the content of what we are teaching.” That’s true, but that’s not quite what I had in mind. Yes, we should be consistent in updating our curricula to address topics of significance. That includes climate change in relation to digital learning. It also may include data ownership, indigeneity, inclusion, and so on. But, what I was hinting at when I mentioned our field’s involvement in the interdisciplinary kind of work that is needed to address climate change were design, development, and evaluation work that we (and our students) could be undertaking. Such work can be expansive. Two examples are the following

  • partnering with various initiatives to support education-related outcomes. For example, Not Too Late is a project led by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua which involves outreach and community-building, and which may benefit from learning design expertise that relates to building, fostering, and sustaining online communities.
  • partnering with others in the design, development, and evaluation of climate-related education efforts. For example, learning designers and researchers are well suited to lead the kind of action listed in Royal Road University’s 202-2027 Climate Action plan (pdf): “Develop a suite of accessible (low cost/no cost; multiple offering) courses (credit and non-credit) and educational outreach initiatives that raise awareness, increase understanding, encourage involvement, and build support for innovative climate actions within and outside the [university] community. Included in this roster are courses related to a range of climate action competencies including climate science, climate justice, social science and landbased approaches to climate adaptation and climate resilience, biodiversity and Indigenous rights.”

Indeed, amongst the many things that education technology and instructional/learning design programs train our students to do is design, develop, and evaluate of learning experiences that address complex issues in partnership with interdisciplinary teams.

A comment on “tips and resources for instructional designers entering the field”

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On May 16, 2018

In sharing

What advice and resources would you offer to early-career instructional designers? That’s the question Inside Digital Learning asked practicing instructional designers. There’s many worthwhile insights for aspiring designers in the piece. I enjoyed reading it, and you might like it, too.

I’d like to add three points:

– The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is the flagship organization for instructional designers in North America. The organization’s annual convention is usually in October. Members participate in one or more divisions of interest (e.g., Distance Learning, School Media & Technology, etc), and divisions often offer free webinars. For example, here’s Dr. Patrick Lowenthal discussing the use of live meetings in asynchronous online courses. [Disclosure: I have been a member of AECT since 2005, and at one point I was the president of the Research & Theory division. In other words, I’m biased]. Other organizations that may be of interest to IDs, but don’t necessarily focus on ID as much as Educause, OLC, and ALT (UK).

– Instructional design is about problem-solving. Are you interested in helping others solve instructional and learning problems? You’re in the right field. You might be asked to collaborate with others in order to improve learning outcomes, reduce dropout rates, improve course participation rates, convert face-to-face courses to online courses, and so on. Be warned though: Some problems may be more interesting than others, and even though instructional designers should be working collaboratively with faculty members and others(e.g., media developers, data scientists, etc), that doesn’t always happen (unfortunately).

– Problem-solving is not just about technology. The best way to illustrate this is to use a problem from the list above, so let’s pick the wicked problem of “improving learning outcomes.” Novice instructional designers might gravitate towards exploring what technologies might help them address the problem, in what Tanya Joosten describes as the act of throwing spaghetti on the wall hoping that it will stick. Instructional design involves analysis: Why are learning outcomes poor? Might it be that they are not well-defined? Are objectives, instruction, and assessment well-aligned? Perhaps enrolled learners don’t have the pre-requisite knowledge coming into the course? Could it be that learners are facing significant challenges that have nothing to do with the content of the course, but which nonetheless conflict with the design of the course? Solutions to these (and a slew of other problems) can be found in redesigning courses, policies, and practices without necessarily adding/removing technology to/from the mix. In our Master’s program, we highlight design – sometimes coupled with technology, often without – as central to innovation.

What other advice do you have for aspiring instructional designers?

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