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• Group Project

  Introduction

  This collaborative project teaches you how to work with your peers remotely. You use a generic instructional design model to address an opportunity using instructional technology.

  Refer to the course calendar for due dates. Deliverables for each part of the project are outlined below.

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  • Overview
  • Deliverables
  • Group Logistics
  • Part A
  • Part B
  • Part C
  • Part D
  • Part E

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   Overview

  

  By completing this collaborative project, you achieve the following:

  • Work collaboratively when face-to-face communication is impossible.
  • Practice a generic model of instructional design.
  • Use a wiki—or similar Web 2.0 tool—to compile, organize, format, and revise information (content management).
  • Present your work in a professional manner.

  You use a generic instructional design model that walks you through the steps of creating instruction. The common acronym in the field of instructional design and technology for creating instruction is ADDIE. We will call our generic model the ADOBE model. This model promises you'll deliver quality instruction, one mud brick at a time.

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  Deliverables

  Group Deliverables (on your wiki or similar tool):

  • An introductory page, including:
  • Briefly describe each group member (1-2 lines).
  • Describe the instructional opportunity.
  • Optional: Include a photo of each member.

  • The following bricks:
  1. Describe the intended learner.
  2. Describe the locale and situation in which your learner will access the instruction (the "learning seat").
  3. Describe the locale and situation in which your learner will use the instruction (the "performance place").
  4. Write a specific instructional objective(s) including the three components of a behavioral objective.
  5. Describe the assessment(s).
  6. Outline and describe the instructional package.

  • One multimedia component from each team member, each presentation focusing on a selected brick. You do not need a presentation for every brick. You do need to complete all of the bricks and each create a multimedia presentation of a unique brick.

  • Research: Annotated references including at least four scholarly references in APA format for each team member. (In other words, if you have 5 team members, your team needs 20 references.)

  Individual Deliverables (submitted via Blackboard):

  • Self-evaluation about the collaborative project, through Blackboard.
  • Peer evaluation, through Blackboard, addressing the effectiveness of collaborative teambuilding with each of your team members.

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  Group Logistics

  Your group will meet in a designated Blackboard Collaborate room and communicate via email. Record group meetings for the instructors. Copy your instructors on all emails. We might not reply, but we're watching to see what you're working on and who is contributing what.

  Include your team number in your subject line for all group communications. If you need the instructor to respond to your email, indicate this in your subject line.

  Optional Suggestions for Working Together

  • Determine a suitable division of labor designating who is responsible for what. Spend some time getting to know each other's skills, interests, and expertise to divide responsibilities accordingly.
  • Select someone to act as moderator for the group during the online discussions and presentations. You can rotate this responsibility if you choose.

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   Part A

  

  • Form a team and email your team list to the instructors. Instructors will not assign groups.
  • Create a team wiki at PBwiki or other Web 2.0 collaboration resource.
  • Invite the team members and the instructors to access the wiki.
  • Determine an instructional opportunity for which your team will develop a plan (no more than a plan) for implementing a proposed solution. For example:
  • High-school aged children of migrant farm workers move frequently and might have difficulties attending traditional American school.
  • My cousin's daughter is dyslexic, and she lives in a rural community in northern Michigan where there are few resources in special education to provide appropriate education, so the proposed solution from her school district is to exclude her from mainstream education.
  • Elementary school children in the “corn belt” whose parents want them to learn Mandarin, but cannot access any native speakers of Mandarin.
  • Other instructional problems that lend themselves to advanced technology solutions requiring distributed teams planning those solutions.
  • Define individual roles for each team member, and list them in your wiki.
  • Annotate at least one scholarly reference in APA format per team member.
  • Present your group’s instructional opportunity to the rest of the class at a high-level (1-2 minutes).

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  Part B  

  • BRICK 1: Describe the intended learner.
  • Present your progress to the class (2-3 minutes).

  It's insufficient to describe your learners as “12-year-old middle school students who do not like school and whose primary interest is texting to their friends .”

  A much better description of your intended learner, assuming it is a 12-year-old, would be to describe something about the socioeconomic background of that student, the academic ability of that student, the resources available to that student, and as much information as you can—generally speaking—about that student. You might consider some of that information superfluous, but there is no such thing as too much description when you're describing your intended learners. 

  For example, instead of saying that the 12-year-old does not like school, give specific reasons why. Maybe the 12-year-old is in a military family and changed schools five times in the last six years. Maybe the student actually really likes the idea of learning but dreads the idea of having to make a whole new set of friends every time she enters a new school. Perhaps the 12-year-old is extremely well-traveled because her family is a military family, and she has been to Puerto Rico and the Philippines. But these trips to exotic places do not equate to a broader understanding of other cultures because she rarely gets to leave a military base. Maybe although she is only 12 years old, she and her friends are expected to take care of siblings and the younger children of other military families whose parents cannot afford daycare.  Therefore, your intended student rarely has free time on weekends. 

  These types of details start present a much better picture of your intended learner. 

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  Part C  

  • BRICK 2: Describe the locale and situation in which your learner will access the instruction (the "learnint"g sea).  Very often, distance learners, and even traditional classroom learners, will master the specific learning objectives in one environment, but that environment is completely different from where they will actually implement their training.  Think of your "first responders."  These people receive training very possibly in a classroom, or online, or even at a fire station where they spend a significant amount of their time, but even though they may be demonstrating their mastery of the objective in the "learning seat" locale, they will not be implementing their training in that specific locale.  They may well be administering oxygen to an incapacitated victim just outside a burning building, implementing training they received back at the firehouse in a completely different situation.   
  • BRICK 3: Describe the locale and situation in which your learner will use the instruction (the "performance place").You might have learned how to calculate percentages in a fifth-grade classroom many years ago. But there is a good chance that the last time you calculated the percentage problem was when you were in when a restaurant and you need to calculate 15% of the total bill and you did not want to embarrass yourself and take out a calculator.
  • BRICK 4: Write a specific instructional objective(s) including the three components of a behavioral objective.
  • Present your progress to the class (3-4 minutes).

  Remember that you are only creating a plan.  When you make further progress into the program, you will implement your instructional plans with real students and make appropriate revisions to your instructional package.  This first stab at designing an instructional plan emphasizes working with a team. When you and your team make your presentation, you will describe the process by which you develop your plan and the insides that you gathered by working virtually. 

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  Part D  

  • BRICK 5: Describe the assessment.  Any instructional plan should have an appropriate assessment component.  Look carefully at your performance objective(s).  How do you know that your learners have mastered, or have failed to master that specific objective?
  • BRICK 6: Outline and describe the instructional package.  You do not need to develop these materials but you do need to describe what those materials entail. Consider the following questions:
  • What types of materials would you include in your instructional package? 
  • How do these materials help the learner master the objective? 
  • How are these materials delivered? 
  • What types of interactivity are involved when the student goes through your instructional package? 
  • How does your assessment match up with the activities?
  • Present your progress to the class. We are not expecting a perfect solution. We do want to know what you have learned (3-4 minutes).

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  Part E  

  • Publish one multimedia component created by each team member.
  • Publish annotated references including at least four (4) scholarly references in APA format for each team member. (In other words, if you have 5 team members, your team needs 20 references.)
  • Complete your self and peer evaluations.

  A very important word is "metacognition."  That word describes how you know about your own learning.  In other words, what have you learned in this experience and how do you know you have learned "that?" That is yourself evaluation.

  How well have you worked with your peers, and how well have your peers work with you?  Personalities will always get in the way in distributed projects, just as they do in face-to-face projects. 

  How has your group been able to set aside time conflicts, family demands, and other outside distractions important as they are, so that you have been able to focus upon meeting deadlines, communicating well with your teammates, developing a group solution to an instructional problem?

  You will complete a straightforward evaluation in which you will determine how well you and your team have coalesced.