Target Audience: 

1. Our learners are potential employers of educational technologists.

2. Learner Characteristics: These potential employers are business-savvy executives with degrees in areas such as business administration, marketing, finance, project management, etc. – probably not in education. They may hold advanced degrees or otherwise have been taught in “the school of hard knocks.”  They are multicultural and represent all genders.  They are most likely middle-aged or older.  They are busy professionals who want the bottom line, quick explanations, and assurances of value and high ROI. They may or may not have ever used an educational technologist.

3. Implications of the learner characteristics that inform the instructional solution: Our learners will instinctively attend a video with greater respect and interest if the tone is crisp and professional.  Our visuals will include well-dressed individuals representing varied cultures and abilities, depicted in office settings.  The video will be mindful of busy executives’ desire for the bottom line and quick explanations, without digressing into topics such as the history of IDT.

Learning Problem or Opportunity:

1. The gap between reality and ideal: Those who hire educational technologists do not always understand what these professionals can do for the company.  They lack a common language for an educational technologist’s varied roles, skills, and strategies.  Ideally, employers and educational technologists will share a common language and mutual understanding of the problems ed techs can solve for the company.

2. Recommended instructional solution: 3-5 minute video

3. Goals addressed: 

By the end of this video, employers will:

• Identify potential performance gaps in their companies that can be closed by educational technologists.

• Articulate how educational technologists can design solutions for the performance gaps they have identified.

Instructional Solution:

We have chosen to create a three to five-minute video because we acknowledge that our learners are working adults with busy lives.  A video captures their attention and shares the information needed concisely. The Cognitive Multimedia Learning Theory and Mayer’s Twelve Principles of Multimedia Learning support our choice of instructional solution. We know from multimedia theory that pairing audio with visuals makes the information stick. This video will be accessible with captioning for a wide range of potential employers.

Design Rationale:

Using Mayer’s principles of multimedia instruction as a guide, we will create a video that will quickly capture and hold the attention of busy executives, avoid distracting extraneous material, and effectively communicate the content to achieve our instructional goals (Mayer, 2009).  According to Patrick Jenlink (2019, p.33), “[M]ultimedia instruction should be designed in a way that recognizes working memory channels and load limitations so that learners can thoroughly process new content.”  Designing instructional materials according to the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning means pairing relevant visual information with contiguous narration in order to reduce cognitive load and enable deeper processing in the learner’s working memory.  Chunking information into short, concise segments; pre-teaching key words and concepts; and following advanced principles such as the self-explanation principle and the site map principle will further increase the effectiveness of instructional materials (Jenlink, 2019, pp.11-16).

(References listed at bottom of page.)