Advanced Instructional Design & Education Technology - Discussion 3 - Fernandez & Rubens

Developing Online Tutorials:  The Methodology and the Reality

Eugenia Fernandez and Elizabeth Rubens

This article is well-written and perfectly timed.  And what's cooler, it's still relevant, even though it was written in 2005 for the IEEE.  

With that said, it does put a lot of responsibility on instructional designers, "[d]esign methodologies which focus on the pedagogical aspects of the tutorial content are less available to content experts, unless one is fortunate enough to work with an instructional designer" - my italics - (Fernandez, et al, 2005, p. 14).  That is an exciting prospect, however, it is a bit daunting (yikes!), as well.  

It is an extremely empirical paper.  The layout of the framework (below), as well as the illustrative Figure 1, make it very clear the process to follow, even if one is not an instructional designer - which is us, though we are candidates.  

1. Objective:  I think that in the past, I have, as the text mentions of other faculty, "written down a list of topics or vague statements" in an effort to curate a learning model.  I like the emphasis this article places on objective (indeed, as does our entire IDET curriculum - thanks ;)).
2. Specific Activities:  This is quite useful for our group as we are in the process of this right now with a task analysis and breaking down the teaching/intro of VR into its incremental steps.
3. Types of Interaction:  This is critical, and made me think a lot about how we will give feedback to our learners.  I'm thinking some sort of VR social media - potential High Fidelity (Links to an external site.) or Altspace (Links to an external site.), in order for teachers to offer input and our tutors to provide feedback, all the while familiarizing the user with the medium of VR.
4. Assessment:  This is a curious one for us, as our clients and learners are one and the same - innovative educators.  How do we gently assess them in a way that is seen progress (not didactic) and will provide beneficial feedback to further their VR development skills?  Perhaps the e-learning module, again, will be linked to VR social media.
5.  Multimedia:  This is the super exciting part and my favorite - really the whole reason I joined this program.  My VR developer skills are advancing rapidly, and I believe, by the Spring semester I will be able to program and sculpt a virtual environment in which the educator-users will be able to learn how to introduce VR while inside VR.  Sweet, huh?!
6. Identify Associated Documents:  This is, of course, huge for our client-learners.  The literature out there on VR is plentiful but probably a bit mysterious and, even, esoteric to a novice entering the field.  We will have to be particularly careful while coding our website.  Remember the old saw, "If you want to teach a man nothing, tell him everything"?  I have a tendency to do this to my victims, er, clients when I am discussing the potential of VR.  It is very important for our topic to be crystal clear and easily navigable at our supporting website.
7. Extensions:  Extension links are the logical followers of the previous step.  Again, I have a wealth of these, yet they need to be distilled and refined into tidy consumable digital meals for our users.  I'm on it!
8. Time Estimate:  Finally, and perhaps the most problematic because of the novelty of our endeavor - time to complete.  Honestly, we are not aware.  This will take some trial and error.  And, it was one of the questions that we asked of our participants during our interviews.  Estimates from participants and observers ranged from several hour-long workshops to six months of repeated exposure.  This will be our experiment.  I believe the time is shorter than most think, and necessarily depends on the educators pre-existing knowledge, values, and, most importantly, motivation.  

Good, good stuff!  Thanks for the module manual, my Friend.  It shall earn its salt.