Lesson 3: Development Phase

Reading this week's assignments finally made everything start to click! I think I finally realize what we are doing and the purpose behind it. O.K. I admit I'm a little slow. I was having a hard time connecting what we were reading to what we were doing. I underlined a sentence in the article "Experts Edge" to describe how I was feeling, and I quote, "In many contemporary training programs, all information is provided before practice starts and is presented in a manner that unnecessarily increases extraneous cognitive load." No offense intended, but I was feeling the extraneous cognitive load.
As I read chapter 9 on developing instructional materials, everything started to make sense. Maybe it was the part about "staying focused". Ya, I admit I have a problem with that. That's why they give me all the ADHD kids in my class. Anyway, I was able to see how we need to understand the development phase in order to proceed with our class assignment of developing our online instruction. I learned the importance of making the instruction concrete and controlling the step size.
The section on self-paced learning reminded me of an article I read recently on home-schooling. I am not a proponent of home-schooling, however, if someone is set on home-schooling their children, self-paced learning seems to me to be the best option. As an educator, I would feel better about children be schooled at home by this method rather than being taught strictly by their, possibly competent, parents.
When I was searching for the best program to complete my Master's Degree I first looked at online programs. I looked into the University of Phoenix. One of the strengths was being able to do it on my own schedule. However, one of the weaknesses was doing it on my own schedule ...and the lack of "self discipline combined with procrastination." Another limitation was cost. It was extremely expensive. In the end, I was grateful for the e-mail I received from UVU promoting this Masters program. It seem to fit the bill for me.
Back to the reading... I did not feel the ADDIE article on successful training development or prototypes applied as much as the Course Development Process, Tabletop Review and Pilot Testing. Course Development requires us to make sure the material meets the learning objectives and if the material will work. One question I had is if you want us to assign specific tasks within our teams such as writer, editor, graphic designer? (You probably already told us this, but I was probably trying to figure out how to use my computer. ) The goal of the tabletop review is to make sure the content is accurate and complete. It is important for us to go through our project to check for accuracy and completeness. (Was that redundant?) My question for the Pilot Testing is whether we should test it or have a child of appropriate age test it. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to have a child test it to make sure it is child-friendly?
I have not added to our project online this week because my computer is in Memphis hopefully receiving some "logic." However, I have been adding to my part of the lesson plans and gathering ideas and websites for our group. We seem to be on schedule. Our main problem may be having too much and having to scale down before our "table top review."
Now the question is...have I put you on cognitive overload?
Thanks for all you do and being so patient with us.