Our target audience includes prospective graduate students - men and women who have completed their Bachelor's degree in an education or technology-related field and are interested in expanding their careers. Prospective students may live anywhere in Texas or the US, as the Educational Technology Graduate Program is entirely online and asynchronous. This allows students flexibility to access the program from their homes at any time of day. Many students have said that they enrolled in the Master's program after learning that the Master's can be achieved in 12 months and that it is a very affordable program.
Prospective graduate students are unaware of the educational technology field and the opportunities available in the field of educational technology. Many students do not know about the EdTech field, skills and knowledge, and career opportunities associated with the educational technology field. Through an EdTech Master's or Certificate program, students will become competent with the knowledge and skills to find work in educational technology.
A short, instructional multimedia presentation could be used to present information regarding the field of educational technology and related information. Prospective students could easily locate and access the information presented in the presentation.
Project Goals:
Prospective students will be able to:
Explain the educational technology field.
Identify skills and knowledge that are displayed within the field.
Give examples of potential career opportunities within the EdTech field.
In order to accomplish the instructional solution that has been proposed, we will create a 3-5 minute online multimedia presentation that will convey information that will fill in the perfomance gap. Within our multimedia presentation, we will provide prospective students information that will highlight the following:
Explanation of what Educational Technology is.
What an Educational Technologist does and the skills they contribute.
Career opportunities that are available to Educational Technologists.
The average yearly salary for an Educational Technologist.
The history of Educational Technology and how it is rooted in technological developments, as well as theory and psychology.
Creating a narrated powerpoint presentation is a better, effective method to use when explaining to an audience for several reasons. Narration provides a human element to the instructional presentation. It makes the overall experience more enjoyable and engaging by incorporating a sense of human connection. A narrator’s voice can be used to emphasize important key information and help guide the learners through complex content by using different tones, inflections, and expressions. When you pair narration with visuals and imagery, it serves as a great supplement to reinforce key concepts & information because it reduces the learner’s cognitive load. This is especially useful for learners who already struggle with processing lots of material at once.
A narrated powerpoint presentation provides structure to the learning material. It provides tools to order the information in a logical way (ex: use of titles, subtitles, bullets, etc) so that the presentation can be broken down into parts, making it a lot easier for our learners to follow the information.
A narrated powerpoint presentation provides greater accessibility to learners with visual disabilities. The concepts and information are presented in auditory format, so learners with blind or low vision can still comprehend and learn the material. This aligns with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
A fully online, narrated powerpoint presentation is great for learners’ convenience. Since it is shared online, our audience can view the content on different devices. For example, if a learner doesn’t own a personal laptop, they can view it on their phone or tablet. This also gives them the flexibility to view the content from almost anywhere in the world (with a stable internet connection). This is great for learners who work full-time jobs or for those who don’t live within close proximity and want flexibility for accessing the content.
The design rationale we chose was an online website with an embedded YouTube presentation created to inform our target audience. This design rationale focuses on accessibility, flexibility, multimodal learning, and cultural representation. The online platform will help provide the target audience with a flexible and accessible learning environment. Learners with different backgrounds and schedules will have the opportunity to access the instructional content at any time and or place.
The combination of using text for the website and the audio/visual with the multimedia video give learners with different learning styles an opportunity to benefit from one or both of the options provided. Additionally, catering the content of the video to students by using examples and information unique to the program helps represent a more culturally diverse approach making it relatable to learners from different backgrounds.
Educational Technology according to the ISTE standards, provides a framework for educators, leaders, coaches, and students to create clear, guided, and sustainable learning experiences with technology. These standards guide and help educational technologists enhance their skills and knowledge. This helps successful technology integration into various environments in both the corporate world and the education field.
Another important impact that educational technology has both for the graduates and current educational technologists in the field is access to more career opportunities being qualified as instructional designers, educational technologists, curriculum developers and technology leaders. This allows current and future graduates to contribute to the advancement of educational technology through research and design.
Reiser, R.A., & Dempsey, J.V. (2018). Trends and Issues in Instuctional Design and Technology. Boston, MA: Pearson.
Salary: Educational Technologist in United States 2024 . (2024). Retrieved from https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/educational-technologist-salary-SRCH_KO0,24.htm