"The Doorway to Professional Learning Communities"

In viewing several blogs on Instructional Design and Technology, one finds that many of them pertain to employment opportunity in Instructional design http://http//www.educause.edu/Professional+Development/JobOpportunities/InstructionalDesignerTrainer/. Other provided information on the structural changes that instructional design play in the schools system http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/, questions and concerns of designer with regard to the ramification of updating existing online curriculum, eLearning http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/why-e-learning-is-so-effective/, Gaming, and instructional design for the neomillennial learning—how learning is for the future and many more.

Ramification to updating existing online curriculum:
1. Have legal guidelines and relevant policies that might affect the course revision changed?
2. What progress or change in the domain field might inform the course revision?
3. What updates in teaching and learning methodologies might be relevant?
4. What updates in relevant technologies could improve the course?

Concerns for Instructional Design: On the other hand, Shalin Hai-Jew an instructional designer, writes in Educause Quarterly Magazine that she feel that there are, “many forces that impede or preclude substantive updates in course content, including a lack of dedicated resources (budget, time, expertise); a lack of political will at the administrative level; inertia on the part of those who first developed the curriculum; and a protectionist attitude toward the existing course on the part of the course developers.”

Gaming as a Designed Platform: Emerging devices, tools, media, and virtual environments offer opportunities for creating new types of learning communities for teachers and students. http://www.virtual-u.org/, and http://www.whyville.net/smmk/nice, and http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/muvees2003/. 

Instructional Design for the 'Next Generation' learners: “The defining quality of a learning community is a culture of learning, in which everyone can be involved in a collective effort of understanding. Bielaczyc and Collins indicated that there are four characteristics that such a culture must have: (1) diversity of expertise among its members, who are valued for their contributions and given support to develop, (2) a shared objective of continually advancing the collective knowledge and skills, (3) an emphasis on learning how to learn, and (4) mechanisms for sharing what is learned. If a learning community is presented with a problem, then the learning community can bring its collective knowledge to bear on the problem. It is not necessary that each member assimilate everything that the community knows, but each should know who within the community has relevant expertise to address any problem. This is a radical departure from the traditional view of schooling, with its emphasis on individual knowledge and performance, and the expectation that students will acquire the same body of knowledge at the same time.” http://www.educause.edu/Resources/PlanningforNeomillennialLearni/

Jew, S. H. (2010, December). An Instructional Design Approach to Updating an Online Course Curriculum. Educause Quarterly Magazine, pp. Volume 33, Number 4.


Week 1 Application