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Challenge 2: Integrate existing instructional materials into the design.
Criteria for successful completion of this challenge: Evidence of finding pre-existing instructional materials (lectures, readings, textbooks, multimedia components, Open Educational Resources, simulations, and other resources) and adding them into a design choice(s) or instructional plan to increase the learning value of the overall design.
Reflection must address: How adding instructional materials into a design choice or instructional plan increased the value of the overall design (remember to discuss the permission aspects of the preexisting documents – did you obtain permission, copyright, reuse rights, etc.); how you selected the material; why the selected material is appropriate in your design; and/or discussing any evaluation criteria for selection of the materials.
Reflection
The competency is to demonstrate an ability to integrate existing instructional materials into a design. The artifacts I have chosen to demonstrate this competency are a reading guide worksheet (i.e. graphic organizer) that I designed and developed for a 3-part book reading group at my work at a hospital system where I am the program coordinator of a Breast Cancer Education and Survivor Support Program (BCESSP); for purposes of this competency documentation, I have redacted actual names. I have also included a PowerPoint presentation I used to lead the workshop, which incorporates the integrated material into it as well. These artifacts demonstrate this competency because they show that I understand how to selectively choose outside material to bolster my overall learning objectives and outcomes, and that I am able to successfully interweave those existing materials while not detracting from other elements of the learning experience. I utilized a small portion of a publisher’s reading guide questions, which is available to the public for this purpose, and I integrated a few of their questions into my own reading guide and worksheet. I did this because though I had my own ideas about the types of questions I wanted my learners to ponder, the publisher also had some great questions, so I picked one from each chapter and documented them as such in the handout.
In instructional design, as a field, it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel every single time. Instructional designers are, and should be, really good at integrating existing materials in order to supplement the original coursework they are designing and developing. It would be impossible for an instructional designer to only ever design 100% original and new content; this is impractical and would possibly lose some learners’ attention because there is such a wealth of materials that can be used for any given learning experience. Of course, one must be an ethical user of such outside materials and use it sparingly and only to the amount absolutely necessary. The artifacts I have provided to showcase this competency include a sparing use of an existing resource—the use of one question per chapter from a publisher’s reading guide—and its use in two different ways: integrated into a reading guide worksheet and as a PowerPoint presentation, which was used in group discussion to prompt learners to share. These two artifacts show how a sparing integration of outside materials—freely provided on the internet and encouraged for public use by the publisher—support the overall goal of my materials. The individual questions per chapter that I pulled out of the publisher’s reading guide and used in my own are great questions to get the learners to ponder over the main topics in those chapters. These materials, as they are used, help propel the learning experience forward because they keep the learner grounded in the text and reflecting on how the material from the book related to their lives—thus, accomplishing the learning objectives.
My prior knowledge in creating the reading guide worksheet artifact includes being mentored by an instructional designer at my last university job. I was already designing worksheets like this but she helped me increase my understanding of the concept of the graphic organizer, and I melded her lessons with my organic tendencies to create learning guides like this for students. For example, I designed graphic organizers for an online English class I taught that was centered around reading and writing about music. Each week, I asked students to listen to a new genre of music and to find a song they liked in order to analyze it using my graphic organizer. It was an effective element of the course because students got accustomed to using it and got better at using it each week. My prior knowledge in creating the PowerPoint comes from many years of designing such presentation aids, mostly for seminars/workshops I designed while working at an academic support department, as well as the continued understanding I am gaining in the Purdue LDT program about designing learning outcomes and making them visible to learners. In the past, I wish I had a better understanding of presenting learning outcomes like I have in this PowerPoint because I believe their presence helps guide learners toward better understanding of what they need to take away from the learning experience. The integration of the outside material (i.e. the chapter-based reflection questions on the artifact) is something I have done many times before, especially as most of my seminars/workshops were on writing and critical thinking topics, so I would incorporate resources and examples to illustrate and exemplify my learning objectives. In all of my English classes over 15+ years, I would incorporate and integrate external materials--like book chapters, academic articles, or things like song lyrics--to supplement textbook content, so the creation of these artifacts to include a few of the publisher’s reading guide questions was par for the course in my book.
I believe the artifacts work well for this challenge because they showcase a sparing inclusion of relevant outside material that is directly relevant to the learning outcomes. The inclusion of these single questions from each chapter of the book, and incorporation of them into my own original questions for learners, shows that I know how to utilize outside material to accomplish my goals while putting in the bulk of the work myself as the instructional designer and subject-matter expert. The reading guide that I created serves as a worksheet for learners and the PowerPoint serves as a guide for learners to discuss the topics in person. In this way, I have diversified how I have delivered the incorporated material and presented it in multiple ways in order to appeal to different learning styles and preferences as well. I learned a lot from the experience of creating this book reading group and its accompanying reading guide because it helped me take my teaching and instructional design skills into my current job with the breast cancer education program. I will only get better at these types of learner engagements, and given the subject matter surrounding my job, I will always have to integrate existing materials into my work-related learning experiences because breast cancer education is built on a spectrum of technical information that an ethical instructional designer would have to incorporate. I will continue developing this competency no matter where I land as an instructional designer. For now, in the hospital system working with breast cancer survivors, I will continue researching and reading on topics and trends related to survivorship so that I can create the most relevant and accurate learning experiences for this demographic that I can.
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