Instructional Design in E- Learning

E learning is association of technology and education. Instructional design is essential in e learning because it helps people in learning. But, what exactly instructional design means? Well, It’s a process where instructional designer creates an instructional environment of learning a specific course. It’s an iterative process that requires ongoing evaluation and feedback. Instructional design is to serve the learning needs and success of students through effective presentation of content. 

Now, what does an instructional designer do? 

- IDs discuss with subject matter expert (SME) about what students need to learn.
- Then, they develop some objectives and they thoroughly revise and rewrite content for it.
- After that, they create media by using some specific tools/software.
-They make it more interactive by adding assessments.

There are various instructional design models and we use them according to the particular situation or task:

1. ADDIE- It’s a 5-phase model. Steps include- Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate. It is the most frequently used model in e learning process.

•     Analyze- This is the first phase of ADDIE, in which IDs clarifies problems and objectives with subject matter experts (SMEs).
•     Design- They begin to create the project. They design the user interface and user experience.
•     Development- In this phase, developers create graphics, programmers develop or integrate technologies.
•     Implementation

2. Dick and Carey- This model is based on reductionist model of breaking down instructions into smaller components.

3. Rapid prototyping- Creating small prototypes and reviewing them at each step makes it more effective in designing e learning material.

Why ID is essential in e learning?

Without instructional design, you just have information on a screen. It might be pretty, and you might have flashy graphics or high quality video, but you won't get good results. If you want your e-learning to improve skills and change behavior, it needs to be designed by someone who knows instructional design. Otherwise, you might as well just put the content in a PDF and let people read it. 

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Seeds Of Violence | Guest Post

Guest Post by Maddy ! 

All our life we are taught to do good, pushed to do better and expected to be the best. What happens when we are unable to perform that way, we disappoint the ones with expectations, and if we do perform they expect more from us. We, in order to fulfill the expectations of others, rather than our own, push ourselves so hard that we find ourselves lost in this meaningless race. The innocence is gone and thus the seeds of differences are sown in our easily mouldable naive mind.

This has happened to all of us. This is how we are made a part of this marathon that we run lifelong only to regret all of it the end nearly learning nothing. This is how differences occur between us:

“In any school this is the most common site of any given classroom

A teacher asks a question and asks a random student to answer (it’s not always the case that he might know the answer). If the student doesn't answer, the other scores are ready to answer with their hands waving high up in the air. 

Student’s purpose: To win, to advance himself at the expense of his peers. 

Teacher’s purpose: To see if students learned their lessons well. 

What actually happens: No one knows how embarrassed the child feels when they are not able to answer. They feel hurt, like they have lost something in life. 

As a result, he might never raise his hands again even if he knew the answer. Or he might just feel like having an irrelevant revenge on the person who embarrassed him in a similar manner of course. 

Voila! The seeds of differences, violence have been planted successfully into your peaceful mind!”

From the very young and tender age in order to gain more we fight against each other, compete against each other and plot against each other. Instead of following our basic nature of helping others, instead of caring, instead of guiding, instead of being HUMAN we grow against each other. We water the seeds of negativity, hatred, anger, jealousy, grudges against each other. And then we expect PEACE in our world, HARMONY with everyone, LOVE from the God.

SOLUTION: “I’m no philosopher to ponder over such points of insanity” this is how we all think cause we are selfish and LAZY. We want someone else to always take care of bigger problems.

What I can tell you is no problem is big or small, tiny droplets make the sea or the ocean, bigger problems are manifestation of the smaller ones that we neglected and didn't take care of, then they aggravate and we no more have time for them. BUT, we can still make a difference. To make a BIG solution we can begin by taking care of the smaller things, as the smaller ones fall in place, the bigger ones will be automatically taken care of.

Coming back to the solution (I was carried away). I read this in one of the books I read sometimes back, in one the schools education system if a student didn't know the answer to the question asked to him/her in a classroom, no other student would raise their hand to answer cause it was considered rude and uncivilized to humiliate or embarrass the first student, it was thought to be barbaric to grow upon someone else’s expense, by showing him down (though this very nature is considered very important in today’s “Modernized” & “Civilized” schools and society). Just think over this, aren't we living in a completely inappropriate world were society promotes competition instead of communal harmony and peace. 

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