Artifact #1: Assessment Onboarding
Summary
In EDIT 7520E: Online Teaching and Learning with Dr. Lauren Bagdy, this assignment was a labor of love, particularly because it was so necessary in my workplace. I pushed myself above and beyond for this project by embracing core knowledge related to instructional design, creating additional theory-based documents to guide my development, such as shaping my activities around Merrill’s First Principles and incorporating Kirkpatrick’s Evaluation to continually test the usefulness of my course.
With Backward Design, I crafted the learning objectives to fill the noted performance gaps, then shaped my instructional strategies around the objectives. My choices of instructional strategies became more obvious as I thoroughly analyzed the learner needs. The faculty audience is busy, highly educated, and do not want to be “patronized.” An emphasis on adult learning principles in keeping the content relevant and applicable to the learners’ goals was crucial. Constructivism was also key. I decided to design activities and assessments that were either identical or near-identical to their workflow, such as formatting a real assessment question, locating real questions with filters, and analyzing real student assessment data (all with the permission of the authors). I also respected their independence and encouraged them to prioritize the activities they struggled with, tailoring the learning to the individual.
Regarding Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction, the entire course is problem-centered, in that they’re trying to complete genuine tasks, and each module activates knowledge from the previous. Each concept is demonstrated through written explanations, images with interactive markers, videos, job aids, and examples before they apply what they’ve learned to their assignments and then eventually integrate the process into their authentic workflows (Merrill, 2020).
Kirkpatrick’s Evaluations is presented with a poll at the end of the course and will continue through monitoring of behavior and outcomes (“The Kirkpatrick model”).
Citations
Kirkpatrick Partners. (n.d.). The Kirkpatrick model. Kirkpatrick Partners. https://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/the-kirkpatrick-model/
Merrill, M. D. (2020). First Principles of Instruction. In First Principles of Instruction: Identifying and Designing Effective, Efficient, and Engaging Instruction (pp. 1–13). essay, Pfeiffer.
Artifact #2: Healthcare Demonstration
My Contributions
- Technology Integration Decision (majority)
- Scripted job aid
- Half of executive summary
- List of readings/instructional materials/technology under Instructor Notes
- Constructivist Instructional Design Principles and Strategies
- Instructional design/principles/strategies/teaching methods in lessons + Practice/Feedback
- Multimedia Instructional Material: Material 3, AI Chatbox
- Healthcare Demonstration Module
Summary
Created in EDIT 6400E: Emerging Approaches in Teaching, Learning, and Technology with Dr. Ding, this group project incorporates both a full report and a sample microlearning course from our created lesson plan. The motivation behind “Introduction to ECGs/EKGs” was to design potential training for a health care course one of our group members taught—specifically, we wanted to add additional training into identifying and treating irregular heart rhythms, since it was a topic noted to be difficult both by our group member and the students themselves (in an interview with us, where we asked detailed questions to analyze their needs).
I’m especially proud to include this project in the “Foundations” theme because it was through the research and development of the design document, final report, and eLearning module that I first began to develop my instructional design perspective. My portions of the final product were especially theory-focused—as I was primarily responsible for justifying the use of our chosen technology (AI chatbox, currently a prototype) and lesson plans with constructivist principles.
I used cognitive apprenticeship, situated learning, Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction, and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, with my group member describing our focus on case-based learning. The constructivist principles seemed especially apt here as we planned from the beginning to design realistic health care scenarios that built in difficulty. The situated learning aspect was perhaps most obvious, as we wanted to create authentic virtual environments to both make the education relevant to the learner and make it easier for them to know how to directly apply what they were learning (Main, 2021). The case-based learning was a similar benefit, since the principles of the theory involve a learner moving through the details of one case and then slowly being able to apply what they’ve learned to new cases; our scenarios were miniature cases (“Case-based reasoning”).
The scaffolding, Merrill’s First Principles, and cognitive apprenticeship went hand-in-hand; the problem-based modules were designed to start off with a demonstration of a “coach” walking through a realistic scenario and demonstrating their expert reasoning, which shifted into the learner completing smaller activities that all activated on previous knowledge with steadily decreasing coach support, culminating in an independent case study/scenario application of their own (Merrill, 2020). This would then all be integrated into their real workflows. As the cognitive apprenticeship model continued, the coaching would decrease and the content would increase in difficulty (Collins et al., 1991). This would be just enough for the learners to remain in the Zone of Proximal Development, pushed a little past what they were capable of independently but offered enough appropriate help to accomplish the tasks—even in the independent case study at the end, a (prototyped) AI Chatbox was still there for general guidance (McLeod, 2025).
Citations
Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: Making thinking visible. American Educator, 15(3), 6–11, 38–46.
McLeod, S. (2025, October 16). Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
The Decision Lab. (n.d.). Case-based reasoning. The Decision Lab. https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/case-based-reasoning