Skip to main content

Week 14 - Activity Blog - What I Have Learned


For this week’s assignment, we were asked to combine all our previous instructional sets into a multimedia set, as a single web page.  In this web page, we were to include audio, video, images, and text instructions as a single form.  The most challenging part of this last project was deciding what to include, which format to use without making the instructions redundant or overload the learner.  Overload of content is something that Lang (1995) warned us about as he described the limited-capacity of information processing that humans have.

What have you learned thus far about designing instruction?
I have learned a lot from this project.  I learned to use programs I had not used before and although I am not an expert at any of them, I’m glad I got introduced to them and I hope to use them in the near future.  I learned that different students learn with different types of instructions and if I take anything out of this class, is this.  I also learned that whatever type of instructions one uses, one should review the content with fresh eyes at a later time and make any necessary corrections.  I learned this by coming back each week to my previous work and reviewing prior to moving to the next part of the project.

What is different? What is the same as other forms of instruction?
Content created with multimedia uses the same framework as any other media instruction set.  The only difference is the program application one uses to create the content.  All I can say is that I am happy with the work I have produced and I am relieved that I have made it to the last final step of the project.

Lang, A. (1995). Defining audio/video redundancy from a limited-capacity information processing perspective. Communication Research, 22, 86-115.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 5 - Activity 3 Blog

What have you learned thus far about designing instruction from a multiple media perspective? How do you think the use of visual-text instruction will benefit teaching and learning? What do you think will be potential issues with the use of visual-text instruction? How do you think it will impact your teaching and learning? What do you think is better about using both images and text? What not? How do you feel about using multiple forms of media instead of a single medium for delivering instruction? After working in InDesign this week, I feel like there so much in this program to learn.  This program can be a little intimidating at first as there are so many options and tools.  This program is a very powerful application which allows for the creation of very nice looking instructional material.  I think InDesign is perfect for designing content with both images and text as it provides a lot more freedom to do different kinds of layouts.  Other applications like ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 7 - Activity 4 Audio-Only

Sounds According to Alten (2002) sound is described as “vibrations that set into motion longitudinal waves of compression and rarefaction propagated through molecular structures such as gas, liquids, and solids” (p. 14).  Audio is the second most distributed medium of instructions, with text been first (Unwin & McAleese, 1988). How do you think the use of audio-only instruction will benefit teaching and learning? There are so many positives when it comes to using audio-only instruction.  Audio content is mobile friendly.  Learners can download the audio content to a CD, flash drive, smartphone, and iPads and play the recording anywhere, including in their car while driving to a vacation destination.  Audio files can also be managed easily, rewinding them or fast wording them as one chooses.  Audio files can also be used very effectively to teach someone a new language.  It allows the learner to do proper words pronunciation, something that text ba...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 2 - Activity 6 - Blog Instruction Using Text and Hypertext

Our activities for this week were on the topic of text and hypertext .  Our assignments required that we use only text or hypertext on our instruction set.  I really enjoyed all of the assignments for this week.  At work, part of my duties require that I create short, step-by-step instructions that the faculty or students can use to learn a simple task for a new software or application.  For very short instructions (half a page of less), I typically try to use simple text and limit the use of hypertext.  I do so when I want the user to focus on the simple task at hand.  Although I have not had professional training for developing instruction sets, I based my designs purely on the feedback I receive from my users. I don’t necessary think that using text-only format on an instruction set hurts or helps explain a subject matter.  I think deciding which format to use will depend on how easy or difficult it is to explain the topic.  If images or v...
Post a Comment
Read more