Course Home and Latest News

No Class on 4/27/2010

April 20, 2010

Because groups are meeting independently to record their final projects, members of the class decided tonight not to meet for class next week (4/27). We will meet again at our exam time during finals week. Details forthcoming in your email and in this space.

New York Times Piece on Open Courseware

March 30, 2010

Read it.

Adding Images to Your Wiki Pages

Februrary 15, 2010

A number of you have asked for help with adding images to your wiki pages. I have written up a brief set of instructions for adding images to your wiki pages.

Reviewing One Another's Lessons

February 9, 2010

Well in advance of next week's meeting, make sure you share with your team members (and the instructor) the drafts of your lessons. To help you give one another useful feedback, keep the following in mind:

• Make sure that you're working through one another's lessons (not just reading through them); try and take on a learner mindset (pretend, if you have to). Do whatever activities are asked of you.
• Keep an eye on the clock or set a timer as you work; remember our roughly 30-minute limit
• Take notes as you're working through the lesson, so you can remember the trouble points (though allow time for this;
• Make sure that the lesson also has clearly stated objectives (probably at the beginning) and a list of required materials/technology (where appropriate)
• Consider suggesting the use of different media: for example, images, illustrations, or screenshots
• Consider also the self-assessment that comes at the end of the lesson: Is it a task? a test or quiz? some other form? is it effective in determining whether the learner has grasped the contents of the lesson & met its stated objectives

Remember: next week you'll present your lesson (per the schedule), but you will have until 2/23 to turn in the deliverables. This is reflected on the calendar and the project one description page.

And just for reference, the groups (according to my records) are:

• Marshall, Julia
• Brad, Tim, and Laurie
• Adesuwa and Jaime
• Carmen and Eva
• Tricia, Brenna, and Amanda
• Nikki, Andrew, and Taryn

Virtual Class Meeting Tonight Due to Weather

February 9, 2010

Class will be held virtually via GChat tonight; check your @iit.edu email account for details. No need to come down to campus.

Fixed Script; File Uploads Now Possible

February 2, 2010 11:30pm

The script for the quiz example from tonight's class has been fixed and uploaded, replacing the old files; we'll dig more into building tests next week, and integrating them with lesson materials. I've also added examples to tonight's page information regarding Taryn's question about short pop-up bits of text.

You can now also upload files to the Wiki. To do this, just add

{{files}}

to the page where you want to upload files.

Reading Questions List

January 19, 2010

Each week, reading questions appear on the given week's page (e.g., week one, week two). But each week's reading questions can also be found on the master list of reading questions.

First Night of Class

January 12, 2010

Welcome to the course website for COM535: Instructional Design. You'll want to bookmark this site for future reference; beyond containing the policies for successful completion of the course, it also contains the course calendar with each week's class agenda and readings and activities for the next meeting. We'll go over both the policies and the calendar tonight.

One of the other important orders of business tonight will be for everyone to register on the wiki. A top-secret invitation code will be given in class that you'll need to register; please set your username (aka "wiki name") as your first name and last initial (e.g., Karl Stolley is KarlS, Jane Smith is JaneS and so on). Read more about naming conventions on the wiki. This will help keep everyone clear on who's doing what on the wiki, while also avoiding having this site show up in a Google search for your full name.

We'll also make sure everyone sets up an hCard for signing pages.

(By next week, edit your page with a short introduction to the class, and then add your name on the Course Members page in alphabetical order. See the WikiHelp page for more information on using the wiki.)

Again, welcome to the course.--Karl