Instructor: Jim Diamond • jpd247@nyu.edu • http://www.jimdiamond.org • AIM: jimmycubb
Meeting Time: 7/11/2005–8/4/2005, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 4:55pm–7:25pm
Location: Education Multimedia Lab, 2nd Floor (West 4th Street)
Introduction: This course is an introduction to the theoretical foundations for designing on-line learning environments and the practical skills necessary for conceptualizing and developing your own instructional web site.
Final Project: Your final project is to be an INSTRUCTIONAL web site that reflects the learning theories, models, and skills that we learn in this class. The topic is entirely is up to you.
Grading Policy: As far as I'm concerned, the most significant component of your grade derives from your participation in class. By that I mean showing up, engaging in reflective and creative dialogue with your classmates (in person and through your web logs), and putting a strong effort into building a web site that reflects a thoughtful approach to instructional design for the Web. While I'm always happy to see strong graphic design, I'm a whole lot happier to see an instructional piece that has actually applied some thought to how people learn. Let's try this for a rough breakdown and we can discuss it in class: Final Project (25%), Design Document (25%), Blog (20%), In-class projects (20%), In-class participation (10%). I will e-mail each of you individually no later than Sunday of every week with my comments on your blogs and class projects.
Day 1: 7/11/2005, Getting Started
- SERIOUSLY: Heed the image above! Refer back to it whenever you start to feel yourself slipping…
- Introductions: Who are you? Why are you here? Find a buddy…
- Setting expectations: What do you want to get out of this course? What do you expect from me and what do I expect from you?
What is a wiki?: WhatWikiIs
How do I edit this particular wiki?: WikiStyle
The SandBox: You can play around with editing the wiki on this page
More about wikis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
What is a blog?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog
Starting your blog: http://www.blogger.com
An example—my blog: http://jamespatrickdiamond.blogspot.com/
A podcast from Bernie Dodge, creator of the WebQuest, on WebQuests, podcasts, and blogs (esp. tracks 3 and 4): http://necc.dmit.asu.edu/archives/2005/06/bernie_dodge.html
- Some basics: Navigating a Mac; Creating folders and storing files; File organization; Downloading images and other media on a Mac; A word about file formats; FTP and connecting to your NYU home site; Books 24x7; flash drives
- Web Design from Scratch: "Web Design from Scratch is a free online course for everyone interested in creating effective web pages." I like this site a lot and you may find it really helpful to go through on your own time as we proceed with the class. If you do, be sure to post the experience up on to your blog. :-)
- DUE NEXT CLASS: Read Chapters 1 and 2 of Lynch and Horton's Web Style Guide; Read Reiser's History of Instructional Design article; Read Chapter 6 of Norman's Design of Everyday Things; post a response (it can be short, but it should always be thoughtful) to each reading on your blog; in addition, post your comments about this first evening of class on your blog (your expectations, etc.); be sure to read the comments posted by your classmates—and respond to one or two ;-) I'm going to ask you to post general thoughts and comments on your blog for each class, so please start to get in the habit of doing so. Who knows, you might actually enjoy it…If you have some additional time (I must be kidding, right?), take a look at the following site on the Apple Learning Interchange: Web Design for the Real World: The Miami-Dade Public Schools Web Academy
Day 2: 7/13/2005, Introducing Instructional and Web Design
- Instructional Design, Part I: Discussion and group project—
Working in small groups, take twenty or twenty-five minutes to craft a definition(s) of instructional design. Here are some useful links: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/%7Emryder/itc_data/idmodels.html, http://www.umich.edu/~ed626/define.html, http://www.pignc-ispi.com/articles/education/brief%20history.htm, http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/peterdl/ID%20Theory.htm
- Introducing Dreamweaver! (interface, WYSIWYG editing, basic html tags)
- Creating a web page and uploading it to your site
Day 3: 7/14/2005, Introducing Instructional and Web Design, Part II
- Instructional Design, Part II: Discussion and group project—
Working in small groups, take thirty minutes to review at least two web sites for quality of instructional design. Elect a spokesperson and be prepared to praise and criticize the sites for the rest of the class. Do you think that any of the design models about which you've read have been considered? Here are a few places to look, though you shouldn't feel constrained by them: Web Pages that Suck; Yahooligans; Blue Web'n. Have a look at this, as well, and let me know what you think: Filamentality
- More Dreamweaver (tables and layout, images, embedding media)
- A crash course in Photoshop
Day 4: 7/18/2005, How People Learn
- Brief discussion of proposed projects
- Design Document overview:
Your design document will provide a detailed explanation of every component of your final project, including the background and problem statement, information on your learners, your choice of learning model(s), a narrative describing the user's experience, and your design choices. The document gives me, an outsider (and that's who you should expect your audience to be when you write this), all of the whys and hows on your project. Formally, the design document should contain the following sections: Analysis (including the problem statement and description of your learner characteristics and target audience), Design Description (User narrative and information architecture), Project Description (descriptions of interaction and page design) and Prototype (original and final flow charts and storyboards). This might be an interesting opportunity to save a document out of Microsoft Word as html and put it up on your site—let's talk about it. It should be a maximum of ten pages, including the flow charts and storyboards.
- Discussion of readings from the weekend
Day 5: 7/20/2005, Style and Movement in Web Design
- Even more Dreamweaver: Behaviors and DHTML
- DUE NEXT CLASS: Post the FINAL prospectus of your project on your blog and please be sure to look at those of your classmates and add helpful criticisms and suggestions when necessary. You should also create a preliminary flow chart and storyboard for your project. These can be simple at first, as they will almost definitely change as you are working. If you do them by hand, please scan them and insert them into a page on your web site. Read Chapter 3: Site Design in Lynch & Horton; read this nice little article on storyboarding; this is a nice summary of storyboarding, as well; post responses on your blog
Day 6: 7/21/2005, Wrapping up with Dreamweaver and Instructional Design
- Final project prospectus is due. This should be posted up to your blog.
On your own or with a partner, apply all of the skills that you have developed to date in order to create a small site (minimum five html pages) dedicated to an overview of what you have learned about instructional design. The site should be designed with the novice in mind and provide a brief synopsis of the topics that we have discussed, as well as links to additional sites that may be useful. Please be sure to include images when helpful and to employ consistent design and navigation. You should begin this exercise by sketching (by hand) a storyboard, which should then be scanned and inserted into its own page on the site. If you are working with a partner, please be sure that both of your names are on the site.
Day 7: 7/25/2005, Starting Flash
- Some very good advice from your classmate, Tanya Schornack (from her blog): "First brainstorm all the components you want to have in your multimedia website. With each component, analyze how each component can be integrated into your multimedia website that make sense to the learner (usability and learning experience). At this stage, you should think about some of the ID techniques like chunking, sequencing, etc. Once you have this done, analyze your component on how they can best be represented structurally (hierarchical, web, sequential) in a flow chart."
Day 8: 7/27/2005, User Experience and Interaction Design
Day 9: 7/28/2005, Open class—let's talk about this
Day 10: 8/1/2005, A guest lecturer and beginning to finish up…
- Guest lecturer (first hour of class): Jeffrey Galusha (http://konscious.com/)—Some Thoughts on the Future of the Web and Education
- Working on projects in class
Day 11: 8/3/2005, Finishing up continued
- Working on projects in class
Day 12: 8/4/2005, The End—Consummatum est
- Final project presentations
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.