LDT300x: Week 7

Interactive Module

This interactive module, "Recognizing Common Signs of Predatory Lending Practices," fits perfectly within my minicourse on financial independence. Its core purpose is to address the learning objective: Recognize common signs of predatory lending, including manipulative language, unclear terms, and hidden fees (CLO 4). This module serves perfectly in educating our target learners, providing them with essential knowledge to navigate potentially dangerous financial options and spot red flags. It's a crucial step in empowering them towards financial independence.

Learners will interact with this module through a variety of engaging activities. My attempt was to keep the content simple, informative, yet engaging. I've included scenario-based gamification, like the "Must Act Now!" challenge, where learners decide whether to rush into a deal. There's also a definition-matching activity for hidden fees and true/false questions to test understanding of teaser rates. Using a variety of activities should be more effective in learner engagement, making the learning experience more dynamic and reinforcing key concepts in different ways.

As someone new to the field of instructional design, all authoring tools are unfamiliar to me, which presents some challenges but also a new perspective to creating content. After researching quite a bit, I decided to use MindSmith. It offered a friendly user interface, was affordable compared to other programs, and seemed to meet all of the ADA and SCORM requirements necessary for this assignment. While there was a learning curve, its design made the process manageable. For now, I'm enjoying the learning process and keen to expand my expertise in utilizing MindSmith, but eventually, I may explore other tools to broaden my horizons.