Week 3 reflections

            As mentioned earlier in the post of the week 2 I focused on partial parts of the two courses that was chosen to be compared through this assignment. In this post, I will shed the light on the other aspects with more details. At the end of this post, Gagne’s model will apply on comparison of two courses.

            Initially, analyzing the learner characteristic is a significant step in the instructional design. This step will help the instructor to choose an appropriate style, strategies, and activities of learning to improve skills of the learners. A good instructor who digs a strong abilities of his learners and cultivates it to the high level. Not only that, but he inspires his learners to know how to learn with innovative strategies.

Regarding the comparison of two courses, there is no a single best way of instructional design. This depends on several factors such as, the audience, content, technology, and an environment.

Although there are varieties of learning strategies, but the instructors did not apply it through the course. To be more precise, the two instructors  of A and B courses did not train the learners to solve problem in effective ways of connecting the content with the current situation. Here, when the learner is put in the shoes of the problem this will give him real training to invent new solutions.  Another strategy like, case study, scenario- based, and Learning through Exploration and Discovery (LEAD) are beneficial for the learners to use in an effective way to transfer the theory into practice.

Integrating new technologies in teaching and  learning processes is being inevitable  decision. Although several instructors utilize technology in preparing and presenting the content, but there are solid practices in this aspect. To illustrate, the two instructors of courses A and B depended on presenting the content by PPT format in their all lectures. Whereas, there are distinct programs and tools that has a strong feature than PPT and no instructors used it such as Prezi, the attractive zooming tool. In the same manner, using YouTube by the instructors is obvious as a tool that helps the learner to understand the course content. Also, it used to support  a critical thinking when the instructor of the course (B) integrating in the lecture activities. However, social media network was not integrated in both courses, especially in teaching methods. Needless to say that social media play a significant role in different part in our lives. Hence, integrating other tools like Twitter, Facebook, tumbler, and Instagram in teaching and learning process will make the students’ journey more useful.

    Evaluation  is considered one of the important  phases of the instructional design. We can not image any instructional design plan without this phase. The two instructors used a different way of evaluating the learners, it is included, write an assignment, group project, quizzes, and criticize the articles. That’s not mean it is all happened in the same course. To explain, two courses rely on individual assignment like writing about  (2000)  words  as a criticizing an article or group projects to support collaborative  learning between learners. The course A utilized the quiz in weekly activities and the mind maps in summarizing the session contents for each week. Although this way is beneficial for the learners, but also it is traditional to use in higher education specially with the massive invitation to apply the innovation in all fields.  Both instructors used a rubric for the assignments. However, the instructors of course A used a clear rubric that included criteria for each part of the assignment. Indeed, this is appropriate for new learners keep all them on the same page on doing the required content. In contrast, the course by the rubric of assignment is like an outline without specific criteria. This manner allows learners to do the project depending on their planning and an organizing. Moreover, it gaves them a wide space to utilize what they study in innovative pattern.

A powerful and useful assessment required a clear practice for feedback. The impact of  an effective feedback will help learners to know their weakness and strengths and it is his chance to treat the weakness to avoid it in the future. The instructors of course A provided learners with a helpful feedback on specific parts and with more details. On the other hand, the instructors of the course B wrote feedback in general way without more details.

            As shown above, it is clear that each instructors applied a different strategies, tools, and methods when delivering the instruction. They have similarity in some parts and differences in another one. In any way,  This diverse grant the learners an opportunity to improve their skills and gain new knowledge in appropriate ways. A good thing with the two instructors that they motivated their learners to face the challenge and enjoy their learning journey.

            To sum up, I will suggest some ideas to improve the teaching and learning processes that pertinent two courses.

- Integrating social media in the instructional design in an effective way to ensure that the learners know what its benefits for him when utilizing social media as a strong tool to support his learning.

- The instructors should pay attention to the methods of presenting the content. And look up to apply other applications, tools, and programs instead of  PPT.

- It is useful to utilize diverse strategies of learning to make the it a fun, and connect the learners with his real world through designing the activities to cultivate the learners' skills.

- Feedback strategies will be helpful if it focuses on the weakness of the learners and how to strengthen it.