iSad

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” -Steve Jobs [The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993]

Thank you Steve, you certainly have done something wonderful. God has blessed the world through your excellent ideas, works, passion, and love. And I owe you a hug. :(

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"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.." -Steve Jobs

Reflection of Fall 2009 Semester

I'm back!

I feel guilty for not updating this blog (my Personal Learning Environment) regularly. Semester is fleeting, and now I'm in my last semester in SU. My goodness, what have I done?!

Okay, reflection time!

Last semester (Fall 2009) was a great semester. I took IDE 651. Instructional Message Design course and IST 616. Information Resources: Organization and Access. Both courses were great! The former was in School of Education, and the latter was in School of Information Studies.

The Message Design course evoked my creative side. Finally, my design skill matters. Not just that I had the liberty to use that design skill, it was being encouraged! (as long as I follow the graphic design principles). I notice, before I took this course I did everything instinctively. I didn't cram texts in a powerpoint slide because I thought it's uncomfortable for the eye. But what I didn't know was there is a scientific reason behind that. It increases the cognitive load! Making it harder for the audience to process the information, hence counterproductive. Message might not reach the audience as it intended. Well, that's just one of the many great principles I learned. I took delight in every assignment Jerry Edmonds, our professor, assigned us. From re-constructing powerpoint slides to creating wireframe of our instruction. Instead of being elective course, I think this course should be a core course. I believe every instructional designer should have this knowledge. By the way, I would recommend the textbook we used in the class for everyone who delivers information, message, instruction for other people, no matter what the medium (prints, audio, video). Our textbook was: Instructional Message Design: Principles from Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (by Malcolm Fleming & Howard Levie) How fun it is to learn the principle of designing instruction from the design perspective! (with the support of cognitive and behavior theories) Total FUN!

The Information Resources: Organization and Access course is a different thing. It was actually a course for students in Library Science program. The reason I took it was because I have interest in organizing, categorizing information, and a bit database. I always wondered how do people organize tons of information with different kinds of topic, and of course mediums, and still making it easily accessible. So, best way to answer that question is to ask the librarian! Study the science behind that process. As I expected, the course was great. I got the chance to learn different way of classifying information. I enjoyed each assignment, no matter how challenging they were. First assignment was about Indexing. We should evaluate a website's index. Second assignment was about Classification. This was my favorite assignment, because when doing the research, I get to read many interesting articles about my topic, which was The Seven Deadly Sins. Yup, I tried to analyze the Seven Vices! That's not the only thing I enjoy about this assignment. It was truly fun reading my classmates assignments. Some friend tried to analyze the classification of Angels (the Cherubs and friends), Snowflakes, Colors, even Wine, Beer, etc. My favorite part was learning the Dewey Decimal Classification and LOC (Library of Congres) Classification. It was amazing learning how people categorized information. The third assignment was, analyzing the non-book resources. I chose to analyze DVD (movies). Again, it was fun yet challenging to learn all the issues. Some friends chose to analyze map, CD, DVD (TV shows), paintings, etc. What a pleasure to read their assignments, as I also learn from them. Of course the final assignments was the most challenging one. We need to evaluate an Information-Retrieval System of our choosing. I decided to evaluate my favorite Design blog! I know it's unusual to choose a blog. But I chose Design*Sponge website because it meets the criteria of an Information System: a store of information, a set of potential users, and an interface by which users can interact with the system.

By the way, there was one session where we discuss about good & bad design (of an interface). My professor, Mrs. Barbara Kwasnik, referenced a book that was also being used as a textbook in my Message Design course: The Design of Everyday Things (Norman). What a delight to know that the two different courses I took (from different departments) somehow relate to each other.

Alritey, I didn't plan to write this long, but what can you do when you have so many things to share?! By and large, I had a great time last semester. I knew.. learning can be fun! It should be fun! :)

IDE651. Message Design rocks!

Here is the chronology of what we did in IDE 651 "Message Design" class yesterday:

1. Come to class, bring a print out of presentation slides of our past work.
2. Jerry showed examples of redesigned presentation slides. He showed the "before" and "after" examples.
3. Then we discuss the presentation design principles by Nancy Duarte*. Good points were delivered:
   • Before making the presentation slides, decide: is it suppose to be a Presentation or Document?
   • Know your audience (Duarte listed 7 questions that can guide us to know our audience)
   • Do we want the audience to: Listen or Read?
   • Don't use graphics/ animation that will distract our audience from getting your points. Use one that will support it.
4. Then we were given a time to brainstorm our presentation slides. How do we want to re-design it?
5. To help us do that, Jerry discussed Duarte's point about using Post-It-Notes to brainstorm. Rule: draw/ write our ideas in the sticky notes, one or two (key) words per sticky note. Stick it on the wall or wherever we want, then re-arrange our ideas (sticky notes) later. This way we can be as impulsive as we can when throwing out our ideas.
   
6. So, for about 45 minutes we were trying to redesign our old presentation slides. There are four points for us to consider, as we rethink our presentation ideas: what's the Story, who's the Audience, what are the Verbs of our presentation, what do you want them to learn/ take away at the end your presentation? The layout, font's type & size, spacing, graphic images, animation, should also support our goals.
7. Ten minutes intermission (eat my choc chip cookie and drink my ice tea)
   
8. Then we were finishing up the sticky notes activity as Jerry prepared the videos he wanted to show. I truly enjoy 'playing' around with marker and sticky notes on the wall, as I constantly rearrange the notes. (oh you should see our class walls! So cool!)
9. Class discussion. As Jerry commenting and giving inputs for each of us, he showed us couple videos from TED to support his points and to give us examples of great presentation. Guess what we watch? Sir Ken Robinson and Hans Rosling presentations. I've seen the first one (never got bored by Mr.Robinson's jokes tho'), and the latter was just mind-blowing.
10. At the end of the class, Jerry (with the help of Yan) took picture of each of our "wall" -with all the sticky notes-!!

To sum it up, here's what we do in class:

1. See examples of redesigned presentation slides
   
2. "Play" with sticky notes
3. Watch (cool) TED videos
   
4. (end of class)

There goes my 3 hours class.
...

[my wall]

...
I want more.

Note:
*Nancy Duarte is the author of Slide:ology, whose work was Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth presentation slides. Her starting price for design/ redesigning presentation is $10,000.- at the minimum. (ckckck)

Quoting Mrs.Kirkhart on Evaluation

Today is my first day of Fall Semester. Yup, summer break is over. A lot of things happened during this summer. First, I got an internship in Say Yes to Education Summer Program (Syracuse). I taught Kindergarten Kids in Dr.King Elementary School. We promoted the university life and environments (of course the great and good ones). The kids called every teacher "Professor" (yup, Prof. Mehkta!) We went to lots of museums in Syracuse. We learned together, but we also had fun together. It was great. I miss the kids already. I learned great things from the teachers, from the kids, from everyone.

Second, I moved in to new apartment house. I moved in with my church friend. I have three other housemates. The house is nice; air-conditioned living room with TV and cable, free internet, and of course it's a non-smoking house. But what actually attracted me to move in to this place was the family who owned this house (aka. my landlord family, which is my church friend's family). I see this family as my family in US. They are very nice and warm.

Third, I got an on-campus employment in CDL (Center for Digital Literacy) in iSchool. I love the work and I expect to learn a lot from this work (which I'm sure I will). This work is one year project work, so my employment will last until next Spring (2010). Yippie!

Fourth, I'm excited to be enrolled in these two courses (for my Fall semester): IST 616 Information Resources: Organization and Access (in iSchool) & IDE 651 Message Design. I hope I will feel engaged and motivated to learn more and to go beyond the syllabus/ requirements. I will start the IST 616 class in 30 minutes! *finger crossed*

Anyway, when I unpacked my stuff a week ago, I found my post-it notes from the Evaluation class I took last Spring semester. I quoted Mrs.Kirkhart (Professor Nick Smith's dearly wife) when she substituted her husband in my class.

This is what I quote from her:

"Doing evaluation will keep you humble"

God bless Mrs.Kirkhart!

IDE632. Summarize of Module 10 Class on 04/07/09

1st Session

The first session of the class was Guest Lecture, Dr. Phil Doughty. He discussed couple of important things:

First, he posed a question “Where in the model you would want to start to solve the problem?” Answers were varies; Front-End Analysis, Conceptual Framework (the how, what, who, and why), Evaluation (Rear-End), and Instruction (which he confirmed as the usual place to start, because this is where ID-ers were recruited). However, he also stated that in the real world, we can start anywhere.
Second, he discussed about the various labels people have toward people who try to solve instructional problems. Various answers came up; Instructional Designers, Learning Facilitator, Technology Writer, Information Architect, Educational Engineers (posited by Dr.Romi), Instructional Psychologist, Teachers/Coach/Mentor/Tutor, Communicator, and for this course the label is Instructional Developer. To quote Dr. Phil, he said that if anyone ask him about what his job is, he would answer “my job is to make learning occur”.
Third, he shared about what he’s been working on since two years ago, “Open Educational Resources (OER) for Vietnam Project” (detail information can be found in handouts he handed in class). He emphasized one part of the model that were used for this project, that one part/ steps are “Three Classes of Interventions” : Professional/Personal Development (PD) – Instructional Development (ID) – Organizational Development (OD). He discussed how PD-ID-OD became an important element in the ID model for this context, might be for our context too. This point is very related to the readings (Module 10).

2nd Session
The second session was Ashley’s presentation of Rapid Prototyping (RP). From what I noted, RP is an iterative design. Ashley gave example of RP; making paper airplane. Another points about RP are:

• Not for a huge scale → unit level
• For experienced ID/ expert
• Not so much FEA (expert already has the scheme/ information about FEA on his head)
• Save time/budget
• The context: should be in environment that is flexible, certain level of trust to the environment.
  

Jerry added about “prototype” vs. “products” → how people would be more tolerance and ‘open’ to a “prototype”, since it means people can keep revising. Vice versa, people tend to be less tolerance, and easier to complain if a “product” do not meet their expectation.

3rd Session
The third session was Yan Suo’s presentation of Gerlach and Ely’s model (1980). This model can be found in Gustafson’s Survey of Instructional Development Models book, page 20. It falls under Classroom-Oriented category. Some information about this model would be:

• In this model, teacher works as a coordinator, rather than presenter
• This model was designed for the teacher
• the five steps (determination of strategy, organization of groups, allocation of time, allocation of space, selection of resources) are interactive, can happen simultaneously.
  

Yan Suo’s references for this presentation were:

1. Gustafson, K.L. & Branch, R.M. (2002). Survey of Instructional Development Models, 4th Edition. ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology, Syracuse.
2. Chen, Kuan-Chung (2004). Classroom Instructional Development Model – The Gerlach and Ely Model. Retrieved from http://siderali.myweb.uga.edu/EDIT6200/UPDATE%20Model%20Critique__KUAN_CHUNG_CHEN.pdf
3. Gerald S.E., Robert C. B., Prachee M. , (1994), A Conceptual Framework for Comparing Instructional Design Models. ETR&D, Vol 42. No.4, pp. 55-72.

Module 10
Organization and Management of ID Centers
Research and Development on ID
Some important information can be found from the readings (Module 10). I will not put everything here, however I will put some notes/ excerpt from each article in Module 10.

• “Studies of faculty development programs indicate how vital it is to have an individual with the commitment, and talent to take the lead in developing, maintaining and evaluating services. Faculty do serve as directors of teaching centers, and they play other roles as well, such as rotating through as an affiliate (e.g., a faculty associate), serving on a center’s advisory board, or sharing their own expertise at center-sponsored programs. But critical to the success of many teaching centers is a high-quality staff of instructional developers who may or may not come from faculty ranks but are able to position their efforts within the context of the campus culture.” (Excerpt from POD Network in Higher Education article)
• Durzo, J article review topics on: 1) The nature of Instructional Development, 2) The Instructional Development Movement, 3) The role of Instructional Development, 4) Characteristics of Instructional Development Agencies, 5) Approaches to Instructional Development, 6) The Scope of Instructional Development Projects, 7) Project Generation and Selection, and 8) Implications for Implementing Instructional Development Programs.
• Sell & Chism (1990) article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different staffing options, the search process, and the “need” to prepare future staff. The term “Faculty Development” is used here as a general descriptor to encompass not only organized efforts to develop the knowledge and skills of faculty, but also systematic activities aimed at improving instruction through developing courses and curricula (“instructional development”) and institutional policies and practices (“organizational development”)
• Locatis and Park (1982) compared Authoring Systems (which allow course developers to build displays, specify inputs, and branch students, focus on how such course ingredients are realized in specific lessons) with ID Expert Systems (part of a family of software tools for automating course development). The major difference between the two is, Authoring Systems are meant for building the final product, while Automated ID tools are intended for planning it.
  

IDE632. Model Status Report - Conceptual Framework

"ID Model for Sunday School Teachers"
(click image for enlargement)

Proposed conceptual framework based on Andrews and Goodson (1980) theory.

1. Type of Orientation: Prescriptive or Descriptive

My model orientation would be Prescriptive, because it is intended to "outline how a learning environment can be altered or constructed in order to affect the variables of interest in a certain way or bring about the desired outcome" (Edmonds et al.). My model would be to help the SST through some steps that is detailed to guide them reach the goals. Phase I model prescribes SST to build libraries (or database) of teaching related materials/ resources. Phase II model is a modification of Gerlach and Ely model (1980) -which is also Prescriptive-, because it prescribes SST in building instruction, with emphasis on the Development part (five simultaneous activities).

2. Type of Knowledge: Procedural or Declarative

The type of task my model is intended to support would be how to reach a goal or Procedural. My model is to help SST reach the goal by prescribing them to follow some procedure. Phase I is to help SST organizing teaching resources, such as collection of songs, clip-arts, games activities, videos, PowerPoint templates, etc. This phase is mainly to help them in classroom resources organization, since it's the basic problem that underline the motivational problem and affected their performance. Phase II is also procedural, because it requires SST to follow some course of actions in building instruction. Phase II follows Phase I, means: to be successfully implementing Phase II, Phase I should be started first. The key in Phase II is to help SST save more time in preparing (design/developing) teaching instructions, because the most activities that consume time (i.e, searching for resources) has been organized, handled, or managed in Phase I. The five simultaneous activities in Phase II model (determining strategy to selection of resource) is the part where teacher can save more time, because they have the option to do this steps asynchronously (means, they don't need to come to come to church to search for resources that usually being kept in church's cabinet, since if Phase I succeed, they will have access to search/ extract the resources digitally).

3. Required Expertise: Novice, Intermediate or Expert

I would say my model does not require a high level of expertise. In other word, I hope my model (both Phase I and Phase II) would be useful for Novice or inexperienced instructional designer. I realized I'm very rookie in this instructional design world, therefore, detailed and clear model would be helpful for me. That is how I want my model would be too.

4. Theoretical Origins: Hard Systems, Soft Systems or Intuition

Edmonds et al. defined the Novice/Soft-System-Based (from Figure 8 at Module 7) as an instructional design model that is meant for novice instructional designers who have knowledge and expertise in a specific context such as teachers. Since my model is to help SST that are novice in instructional design process, I think my model fits best in this category. Phase II is actually a modification of Gerlach and Ely's model (1980). There's an additional steps there:

1. Divide Responsibilities among Teachers
There will be at least two and up to four teachers for each class, and they usually divide responsibilities in searching-preparing teaching materials/aids. Even though this step tend to be perceived as part of Determination of Strategy, actually it is different, because Determination of Strategy refers more to the strategy to deliver the instruction in class, while Divide Responsibilities among Teachers refers more to strategy for teacher in preparing the teaching resources.
2. Implementation
Gerlach and Ely's model -1980- did not stated explicitly this steps, as Kuan-Chung Chen stated in the paper*; "the model is relatively weak for implementation. Though each step in the model provides some implications for implementation, it is better to specify it as a single stage", that's why I added this step)

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* Kuan Chung Chen (2004), “Classroom Instructional Development Model–The Gerlach and Ely Model”
http://siderali.myweb.uga.edu/EDIT6200/UPDATE%20Model%20Critique__KUAN_CHUNG_CHEN.pdf

IDE632. Goals and Objectives

Most of the readings in this module focused on Behavioral Objectives or Performance Objectives. Actually I'm not sure how am I going to apply that to my situation/ model, because I think the real problem with my system is not a performance problem (even though it looks like one --> SSTs do not perform as expected). I think that SSTs performance problem -their accountability-, is only the tip of the iceberg. It is only a manifestation of a larger problem, which is the complexity of SSTs responsibilities/roles.

The goal of the model is actually to simplified the system (SSTs working mechanism). As I put in the graphic in my "module two" posting, my model's purpose would be to help SSTs create a simpler course deliverables and simpler system of class preparation. So that they don't have to spend too much time to prepare the class.

However, if I think again, my model should help SSTs have better performance. Hence, the behavioral objectives/ performance objectives would be:

1. SSTs will be able to prepare each Sunday's lesson-plan according to the steps indicated in the model
   
2. SSTs will be able to utilize the resources provided to prepare game activity as part of the lesson-plan
3. SSTs will be able to utilize the resources provided to prepare songs to be sang as part of the Sunday School activity.
4. SSTs will come regularly at Sunday School
5. SSTs will report to coordinator if cannot come to Sunday School
6. SSTs will be able to welcome new children in class, and encourage class to blend in with the new-comers