Instructional Design

1. RUNNING HEAD: Evaluating One’s Developed Course Material 1
Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano
Community of Practice Reflection:
Evaluating One’s Developed Course Material
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano
Monday, May 4, 2015
Twitter: @jonacuso
Post 162
Antecedents
After creating plans and prototypes for an online course, it is important to review
your work and evaluate the materials that you have created. It is important that you
evaluate the course materials that you have developed and highlight areas that can be
improved. But this is something that can only be done when the process has undergone
planning and production.
Here we have four questions that anyone in instructional design should ask
him/herself. Take a look at this short questionnaire and keep the questions in mind when
working with your instructional design and development.
The Questionnaire
 How can you improve the quality of the instructional resources you
have developed?
Quality –in terms of the instructional resources one gets to design and develop for
an online course- is something that can be improved only with time. To put it simple,

2. Evaluating One’s Developed Course Material 2
Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano
anyone developing instructional resources needs to get confident with the use of the
ADDIE model to create them and review the process every step of the way.
Evaluation needs to be one of the cornerstones of this never-ending cycle in the
search for improvement. After this phase, the real creation of the instructional prototypes
and their use in a real course is what will tell us where they need to be refined to make
them better.
 What challenges can instructors anticipate facing during the
evaluation of the online course?
As pointed out in several of my blog posts regarding instructional design,
evaluation of an online course is crucial, but only through the gaining of experience in
the ADDIE model –as a creative design process- is what becomes the initial challenge.
As soon as we get to develop some “clinical eye” after working with the
instructional resources with real students, we can determine the areas that need to be
improved to make them more profitable for learners. With a lot of common sense,
creativity, and some good training on video and audio editing, teachers can do magic.
 How can it be planned to mitigate these challenges?
As mentioned before, a way to mitigate these challenges is to evaluate the results
one gets after the use of instructional resources. As soon as students get to use those
resources, there is some sort of summative and formative assessment. Both of them can
give us some qualitative data as backwash that when analyzed can give us a good insight
of how these resources are working to help students build up their knowledge.
There will not be an immediate change, but it will trigger some good thinking that
can help us improve to mitigate any “bad” effect we have discovered along the way.

3. Evaluating One’s Developed Course Material 3
Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano
 What questions may instructors still have about implementing and
evaluating online or blended courses?
More than questions about implementing and evaluating an online course, lots of
recommendations come into my mind.
a) The ADDIE Model is a great tool to work with educational resources and to
make sure they align with one’s instruction, but it must be borne in mind
that we must think globally. That is, it is not just working with a single
week’s learning goal; it is working with the whole package: 15 weeks.
b) The implementation phase might take longer than you think, and for that
reason one does not have to panic or get annoyed. A whole online course
takes time to be carefully developed to have it running well.
c) Train yourself in the use of Web 2.0 tools and software that can be of use
in your field of expertise. The know-how of all these gadgets around you
can become handy.
Conclusion
Online, hybrid, or blended teaching is no easy task. Improvement in the creation
of instructional resources must be attained via ADDIE rationale. However, it must be kept
in mind that it is necessary to go through the process not just in a lineal way, but cyclically
where any of the steps can be used: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation,
and evaluation. Challenge anticipation is one other thing that must be considered. Ideas,
for them to get materialized, may bump into challenges that were not initially thought of,
but if this can be done from the very beginning, the instructor is bound to find ways to
overcome problems. And if questions arise during the designing or developmental stages,
it is necessary to contact one’s community of practice to nurture oneself from the
experience and expertise of others who may have already found ways to overcome the
same challenges we can face.