ACA Distance Educator's ToolKit
Instructional Units
For the past twenty years, practical and effective applications of instructional design have embraced many of the formerly fragmented schools of learning psychology. The distance instructional unit may include elements from the modern equivalents of all four classical schools; behaviorist, cognitivist, social psychological, and constructivist. Using the eclectic approach, an instructional unit for a distance course will take into account a variety of different learning styles, including both passive and active learning models. A combination of both qualitative and quantitative measures of student performance allows for both immediate (automated) and high quality (time-lagged) instructor-based feedback.
Let's review the common components:
Advance Organizer: effectiveness can best be explained by the Modern Cognitivist perspective, including memory mapping, and cognitive frameworks. Advance Organizers usually contain the following three components:
- Expository Organizer
- Comparative Organizer
- Learning Objectives
Streaming Lecture, Self-Paced Pathways, and Supplementary Readings:
- provides a framework that fills informational gaps and holds all the outside reading and supplementary materials together.
- reiterates and clarifies the importance of specific points in order to provide the proper hierarchy for the student's mental framework.
- updates the reading material, remediates, and addresses frequently asked questions.
- adds additional material and comparative examples.
Formative Quiz: employs both the Neo-Behaviorist and Modern Cognitivist perspectives, including the benefits of immediate feedback, practice and drill, mastery, operant reinforcement, and the development of mental frameworks. The low point values assigned are just significant enough to motivate the student to keep up with the material and interact with the text on a regular basis. The formative quiz, while not a true assessment tool for you as the instructor, does provide the student an opportunity to clarify their own level of knowledge about the material in a low stakes setting.
Parsimony Statement: employs the Modern Cognitivist perspective concerning Metacognition, a tool to help students' awareness of the mental framework process. Self-generating very short summaries (e.g., 25-word summaries) requires the student to reflect on the chapter read and abstract from the chapter the essential message or theme that characterizes the author's purpose in writing. It is suggested to have students first practice developing summaries for short, easy, and well written essays, then gradually introduce them to longer and more difficult texts or entire chapters for them to summarize.
Discussion Web: may employ either or both the Contructivist and Social Psychological perspectives, including the benefits of an emphasis on learning goals rather than process, and the probable inclusion of social interaction and cooperative conclusion making. This form of distance instruction requires that at least three students are simultaneously active in the course. Each discussion web assignment usually has two dates associated with it: a required date for initial posting, and a required date for at least one thoughtful response to another student's initial posting.
Authentic Tasks: employs the Contructivist perspective, and in the case of group web projects or live chatroom debates, the Social Psychological perspective. These assignments should emphasize active problem solving over the more passive transfer of information associated with programmed instruction. The transfer and application of existing knowledge to a new situation is the best indicator of deep learning and intellectual development. Because of their inherently qualitative feedback and variability of method, such assignments require more time investment from both the students and the instructor, and may not be systematically included in every unit.
Cumulative Summative Assessment: fulfills institutional requirements. Cumulative Final Examinations are not learning tools for students per se, since typically the only feedback the student receives is a score or letter grade. This is often because instructors are on a short deadline to turn in final grades, and therefore do not have the necessary time to do in-depth feedback. Accordingly, there is not much research that supports their use as part of the learning process. However, such examinations can serve as a tool for the distance instructor to benchmark student performance against other groups as part of the instructional effectiveness assessment process.
For an in-depth instructor's guide to neo-behaviorist, modern cognitivist, social psychological, and recent constructivist research as applicable to higher education, please read:
Ormrod, J. E. (1999). Human Learning, 3d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.; Merrill.
If you have the chance to study this text, you will not regret the time spent.
This table is representative of two units from Literature of the Bible Online. Instructor, Wes Astin.
Professor Astin chose a weekly format for this survey course, and included many suggested reading dates and specific assignment deadlines spread over 12 units to assist first-time distance learners with time management. Every three units has an associated essay for a total of four essays due throughout the summer. There are no summative mid-terms or finals. This format was deemed suitable for Sophomore level or higher students with a standing GPA of 2.5 or higher.
The Advance Organizers below are the only active links for this demonstration.
Week Hauer & Young Assignment Monday Wednesday Friday Saturday 1
Course Introduction
Read the Discussion Web Guidelines
Read the Parsimony Exercise Guideline
Read Chapters 1&2 May 12
Read Gen. 1:1-3:24
May 14
Discussion Web: A prominent twentieth-century biblical scholar once said, "I cannot take the Bible literally, but I can take it seriously." What do you think this interpreter meant by this distinction? Are there types of literature which need to be taken literally in order to be taken seriously? If so, is the bible this type of literature? Title your post as "week 1."
May 16
Read Gen. 4:1-16
Discussion Web: Submit responses to the views of two classmates.
Submit Chapter 2 Parsimony Exercise by 6p.m. to wastin@ferrum.edu Take
Quiz A
& Quiz B (Both are Due by 4p.m. Fri)2
View Streaming Presentation:
Story of Abraham in Cultural ContextRead Chapter 3
May 19
Read Gen. 6:1-8:19
May 21 Read Gen. 11:26-15:6 and 16:1-16
Discussion Web: Abraham's wife, the beautiful Sarah, is taken to Pharaoh's house while they are in Egypt. Abraham tells her to claim that she is his sister, so that the Egyptians will not kill him. With this in mind, do you think it is ever right to be deceptive in order to protect yourself? Explain. Title your post as "week 2."
May 23 Read Gen. 21:1-21
Discussion Web: Submit responses to the views of two classmates.
Submit Chapter 3 Parsimony Exercise by 6p.m. to wastin@ferrum.edu Take
Quiz C (Due 4p.m. Fri)
Continue to the next section: Summary & FAQ