Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Instructional design'

Scenario-based instructional design is ideal for workplace training, as it promotes practical and performance-based learning through the use of realistic situations. The research problem is a need for well-defined heuristics, what Gibbons (2014) called operational principles and what York and Ertmer (2011) called rules of thumb, being basic guidelines that promote and characterize expertise, in the area of scenario-based online instruction. The purpose of this Delphi study was to gather expert feedback on ideas in the form of a set of best practices for scenario-based online instructional design for the workplace. The research questions break down the topic into four basic areas: identifying a learning problem, discovering scaffolds or learning resources, maintaining project momentum, and essential concerns for instructional development. Experts in workplace scenario-based instructional design, with particular emphasis on professionals with an online or academic presence, were recruited as subjects. A detailed review of the literature gathered forty-two original statements that were organized into five categories. Per Delphi methodology, the study was conducted as a three round iterative online instrument. Subjects were asked to rate each statement and to provide additional statements to clarify and expand on their best practices based on their experience. Twenty-nine subjects completed all three rounds of the research study. While the statements express a wide variety of best practices for the field, recommendations for further research generally focused on thoughtful consideration of the learner, the instructional development team, and a focus on the integrity or realistic authenticity of the learning scenario, throughout the instructional experience.

Web technologies have necessitated a transformation culture in higher education
institutions. Many of these institutions are employing web technologies whose
development, for varying reasons, is not supported by research in their field and
domain of use. One such field is instructional design for the web learning.
Although there is a lot of research on the most effective instructional design
strategies, the use of research for web-based learning applications has been
limited.

This thesis reports on a study aimed at transforming the research on instructional
design into practice by designing an instructional design system and providing an
argument for its implementation. The argument is intended to facilitate the design
and development of an instructional design subsystem of the web, that would in
turn offer effective and efficient ways for creating web-based learning materials
to instructors.

The study started by examining the various paradigms, theories and practices of
instructional design with the intent of using them to enrich and improve the
practice of instructional design in web learning. It undertook a thorough and
systematic review of the literature on instructional design in order to come up
with an instructional design system. The design approach used successful design
patterns that have been used elsewhere, e.g. in software design, to create common
responses or solutions to recurrent problems and circumstances. Instructional
design patterns were identified in this study as the recurrent problems or processes
instructional designers go through while creating instructional materials, whose
solutions can be reused over and over again.

This study used an iterative developmental research process of finding and
modelling an instructional design process as the research methodology. This
process follows and builds on existing research on instructional models, theories
and strategies, and ensures that the same methodology can be used to test the
theories in the design, thus improving both the research and the design.

This experiment tested the effectiveness of an equivalence-based instructional procedure on verb acquisition among five typically developing, low-performing first grade students. Additionally, the researcher compared the possibly differential effects of picture and video formats to teach actions as concepts. The researcher custom-designed a computerized, multiple exemplar plus fluency-based match-to-sample training procedure to directly train 96 total relations across 24 potential generalized equivalence classes (i.e., 24 verbs). After training, students completed post-tests for 408 potential untaught relations per verb. The independent variables in this study were the instructional procedure implemented and the two instructional visual depiction formats—photo and video. A multiple treatments, multi-probe experimental design was conducted. The researcher measured (1) accuracy, (2) rate of response, (3) the number of criterion-level performances, (4) the number of derived and generalized relations, and (5) the number of stimulus classes formed across three dependent variables: emergent relations tests, generalized emergence tests, and retention tests. The results showed that (1) the procedure implemented was overall effective in facilitating verb acquisition across some but not all measures tested; (2) video format was as, if not more, effective compared to picture format; and (3) which format promotes relatively better acquisition depends on the unique learning history of the individual student. This was a preliminary investigation and, therefore, provides initial information on verb acquisition, adds to the literature in generalized equivalence class formation, and serves as a basis for many areas of additional research.

Instructional design (ID) is not a process that happens linearly as prescribed in models. Designers have a critical role of using their design judgment in design and shaping the practice. In the past decade, studies focusing on instructional designers in design have been identified and interest toward design judgment in ID practice has been increasing. However, how ID students exercise design judgment and how their design judgments develop have remained unexplored. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore ID students’ exercise and development of design judgment over a semester when working on design projects.

In this study, a qualitative, multi-case study design was employed. The participants were ID students in master’s level introductory ID courses from different institutions in the USA. Data sources included course syllabi, course materials, students’ design projects, design reports, and semi-structured interviews conducted in the middle and end of their courses.

The findings in terms of ID students’ design judgment exercise revealed that students make design judgments continuously during their design processes and different types of design judgment were made concurrently. It was found that their design judgment was shaped by external factors and when making design judgment they used their experience. In terms of students’ design judgment development, the findings indicated that students’ design judgment developed slightly by the end of semester and their design judgment development varied by person. However, most of them were still identified as novice designers. The findings also suggested that design judgment can be developed with practice over time. To support ID students’ design judgment development, recommendations were made for ID education including increasing awareness of design judgment, considering the nature of design projects given to students, providing opportunities for reflection, considering instructional strategies such as peer review and mentoring and shifting to studio-based ID education.

The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to determine practice and feedback strategies used by instructional designers when creating synchronous online instruction. Practice and feedback have survived through many modes of learning including classroom, asynchronous online learning, and synchronous online learning. The research design consisted of open-ended questions administered during a telephone interview. A pre-qualifying questionnaire was posted on social media to recruit participants to determine the sample population; the qualifying survey produced 14 participants who met the requirements to participate in a telephone interview. The participants answered nine questions during the phone interview. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded. Based on the participant responses, five themes emerged. The results of the study contribute to the field of instructional design by providing suggestions of the current use of practice and feedback in synchronous online instruction and how they use motivation strategies to encourage adult learner participation. Similarities were found between the results and reviewed literature. This study was limited by only interviewing instructional designers who work, or have worked, in a hospital environment. Suggestions for future research would be to repeat this study on a larger scale by recruiting more participants that work in different work environments as an industry, higher education, and computer technology.

High-ability adolescent African-American females from rural communities face many challenges when attempting to access science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) career pathways. This research study focused on seven high-ability adolescent African-American females from rural communities who attended a public STEM-focused boarding high school in the southern United States.

This study used ethnographic methodology to examine race, gender, and giftedness together to explain how and why a selected population of seven African-American girls from rural environments who attended a southern, state-sponsored residential math and science high school successfully navigated STEM career trajectories. Despite encountering pervasive gender and racial discrimination, the young African-American women in this study persisted on STEM career trajectories because they were supported by a role model or mentor; accessed prolonged and meaningful exposure to STEM concepts, including attending a STEM-focused boarding school; and demonstrated a blend of resiliency, high self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy. Although the sample size is small, this research provides encouraging results that show young African-American women can successfully pursue STEM careers despite facing substantial barriers (English, Lambert, & Ialongo, 2016; Ghodsee, 2016).

This research is significant because high-ability African-American females represent an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in America. Expanding the contributions of young African-American women in STEM-related fields would also help safeguard the economic vitality of a robust STEM workforce.

Problem-based learning is an especially useful learner-centered instructional approach in which learners collaborate within small groups to solve an authentic ill-structured problem that has no right or wrong answer. However, facilitating and designing problem-based learning can be challenging for instructors as well as instructional designers, especially for learning environments, such as the law enforcement academies, that traditionally have been designed for rote memorization and repetitive skills. The purpose of this basic qualitative research was to interview and explore instructors’ experiences and the factors instructors believed are essential for facilitating problem-based learning in their learning environment. For this study, participants were selected based on their attendance at the 2014 annual conference or by referrals from those attendees. Eleven participants met the requirements of having completed the 2-week problem-based learning instructor course sponsored by an organization dedicated to the advancement of problem-based learning in police training and had 3–5 years of facilitating problem-based learning in their learning environment. In this study, semi-structured interviews with law enforcement instructors were used to provide knowledge and insight about the challenges they experienced, such as resistance to change and instructional strategies used to overcome these challenges, as well as key elements of problem-based learning. Additionally, the findings provided instructional designers insight into how to design problem-based learning instruction using effective instructional strategies identified by participants. Moreover, participants provided instructional strategies on how to move from a teacher-centered learning environment focused on lower level skills to a student-centered learning that foster problem-solving and critical thinking skills using real-world situations. A recommendation for further research is to conduct a study on a larger sample to explore facilitators’ experiences when facilitating problem-based learning. A second recommendation calls for a study to identify ways for educators and training and development professionals to promote the benefits and value of the problem-based learning process to their agency leadership and educational institution administration. A third recommendation is to conduct a study with a targeted audience of instructional designers who have designed and developed training for the law enforcement field and who use a student-centered approach to explore further strategies used to incorporate real-world instructional methods that enhance critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Writing anxiety impedes meta-cognitive writing strategies, which results in a decline in writing skills amongst college freshman composition students. This study examined the effect autograders have on reducing writing anxiety. This paper presented (a) was there significant difference in students’ writing anxiety based on autograder usage for evaluation, (b) was there significant difference in writing anxiety on the basis gender, and (c) was there significant difference in writing anxiety on the basis of age. The participants were 129 community college undergraduate composition students, 67 male students and 62 female students, of first year English Composition Community College classes 2017. The samples were selected using purposive sampling. The data were collected from the Daly/Miller Writing Apprehensive Test adapted for Survey Monkey as a pretest to determine a baseline writing anxiety scale and as a post-test from an experimental group using an autograder to evaluate the writing and a control group using an instructor to evaluate the writing following an in-class writing. Then, the data were analyzed quantitatively using ANCOVA and ANOVA. The result showed no statistically significant difference on the basis of autograder usage, gender, or age. However, the findings confirmed previous research on community college students and indicated community college students’ exhibit writing anxiety. In addition the study almost resulted in statistical significance on the basis of gender and age. Closer analysis revealed students’ writing anxiety decreased with each writing attempt.