Karen Gray

As part of the educational/training field as an instructor, instructional designer and technologist, I believe that it is our responsibility to ensure all learners find the most effective way for them to learn. Giving them the opportunity to thrive to the best of their ability through the use of multi-modal content, authentic formative and summative assessments, and interactive and engaging activities.

I am a firm believer in:

• Authentic learning, incorporating real situations and simulations so that learning is done by doing the real thing.
• Learner to learner interaction. It has been found that if learners can explain their thoughts and ideas and then reflect by comparing with other ideas, the knowledge sticks better. Discussion boards in the past have (in my opinion) been poorly utilized. They need to be a place where learners can work out their understandings through peer interactions.
• Universal Design for Education, giving learners more than one way to learn the content.
• Technology integration, incorporating technology with the curriculum so that learners are using the technologies in their learning that they would be using in the “real world”. This gives them the content as well as being up to date on how to use current technologies.

People learn best when they develop their own learning, discovering the solutions, and not by just listening to the “sage on stage”, though that can be one component of a whole learning process. It is also critical that learners are constantly assessing their own learning and being able to ask questions and make mistakes. Failing is the best way to succeed. With our teaching and learning process we want to inspire learners to want to understand the world around them, whether it is in the context of business, language, STEM or the humanities.

The learning process. There has been a great deal of research recently on how people learn and as instructional designers we need to be constantly updating our knowledge on these ideas and how to put them into practice. Learners can’t be expected to pull information out of their long-term memory by just taking in material through a lecture format, studying by reading their notes, and then taking a test. In order for knowledge to stick: we must use Universal Design when giving learners content by allowing multiple ways of receiving the information; learners must engage with the content through practice and formative assessments; and then summative assessments must be as authentic as possible, testing learners on real world applications. And finally, learners need to reflect on their learning; understanding why they are learning it and how they can use it in the real world.

Creating Courses. I use Backward Design when creating a course or learning object through the use of an alignment map, and I use the Quality Matters rubric for online courses to ensure the course layout meets the needs of all learners including accessibility issues and ease of navigation.

And finally, I am passionate about what I do, helping learners to thrive and creating situations where they want to dive deeper into the subject at hand. The best feedback I can receive is when a learner turns to me and says, “That was cool”.