Of Teaching Goals and Strategies

We experienced making an instructional design (ID) last March 23. It was a whole-day workshop and for the morning part, we focused on creating objectives which will guide how we structure the activities we will teach. Initially, I made five objectives but after some advice from our teachers and a revision, it was narrowed down to three because the first three out of the five were just levels of each other.

 In the afternoon, we focused on the content, strategies, resources required, and the kind of evaluation to be done for each objective. It was faster than creating the objectives. I realized that once we get our objectives for the client straight, everything else will follow so we have to make sure our objectives are clear and simple. We also have to think about whether some of our objectives can be merged with the others if they are similar in thought or just a "leveling-up" of lower levels. To meet this, we also have to be conscious of the level of function our clients are in.

 It is very helpful that we did this activity so that in the near future, we already know which areas we should be careful with in making our IDs. For example, I need to think of objectives which I can directly measure, something not vague. From there on, what I put in the ID follows. It makes a session with a client easier, structured, and more efficient. It helps us stay on track and avoid deviating from what we need to observe. With time, we surely will get the hang of making instructional designs and with more practice, we will hopefully be able to make better IDs.