Week 7: What's on Your Mind?

What’s on your mind? Chapters 6 & 7

This discussion was free form, with students raising questions and topics of interest to them in the material that we had covered.

There was initial discussion about the “Scenario Example” and what it implies for the skill set needed by the Instructional Designer. The Scenario Centered lessons were held to be superior for learners, but higher in time investment.

Reusable versus Repurposed content was a big topic for this week. First clarification or the terms was needed. A conversation that should have been part of this definition was missed – is something reusable only with in a course? An institution? The limits and intent of reusability was unclear to many students, and various strategies were attempted to label it.

Reusable topics were seen as a core feature of good technical writing. Questions remained about the limits of applicability. Within a course? Within a field? Within the sum of all knowledge?

Another topic was a critique of the book itself. Alia raised the issue of focus and direction of the Horton material. In particular how it relates to creating material in an academic setting. I gave my own opinion that Horton did not seem to have experience in an academic setting, as all his examples are related to corporate training. This seemed to provoke some of the first thinking about the source of our main course book and whether or not it’s the bible of writing eLearning materials.

My best contribution was backing up Alia’s initial observation questioning the intent and background of Horton’s writing. Alia asked if he wasn’t addressing topics, my observation changed it to question if there was a gap in his knowledge and background. William awarded this an inspiration point as it caused him to do a review of Horton’s material to date.