Educator's Review: Instructional Design: Easier with WIDS
Anne Arundel Community College,
in Arnold, Md., has many excellent instructional staff and faculty and plenty
of technology. But we weren’t sure how to proceed with revamping the college’s
developmental reading program.
It was time to change—but how? How do you take two very traditional workbook
and worksheet-based developmental reading classes and transform them into a
comprehensive program that truly meets the needs of under-prepared students?
Research into best practices, along with one of our mission mandates focusing
on learning outcomes, clearly directed the faculty toward a performance-based
learning model—one that specifies learning results in advance of instruction.
The WIDS (Worldwide Instructional Design System) model, a comprehensive strategic
plan for learning and assessment design, fit our goals.
WIDS offers a set of tools to educators to facilitate competency-based curriculum
design. These include a curriculum design model, training, and software. WIDS
is a division of the Wisconsin Technical College System Foundation, a 501(c)(3)
not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the advancement of vocational, technical,
and adult education.
Sometimes it is all too convenient to write a content outline, state a few
objectives, identify a textbook, and consider a course developed. Genuine course
and program development require a great deal of thought, starting with the end—the
outcomes you expect—in mind. WIDS provided a consistent framework and terminology
for our curriculum development. It was logical, systematic, and helped us think
like experienced instructional designers.
Course and Program Design
The WIDS software served as a tool—not a be all and end all—in our development.
The application is a database, and walked us through elements of our course
and program design. From the first step—determining what you want the learner
to be able to do as a result of the course—through development of specific learning
and assessment activities, WIDS helped us think about curriculum and what was
being asked of learners. Among the questions raised:
- Who is the learner?
- What do you want the learner to be able to do? (competency)
- What supporting skills, knowledge, and processes d'es the learner need
to know in order to do this? (learning objectives)
- How will you know when the learner has achieved the competency? (performance
assessment task)
- How will the learner go about achieving the competency? (learning activities/
learning plans)
WIDS software is easily navigable with buttons and menus—truly point and click.
The program also provides on-screen, step-by-step directions for every aspect
of the process. A verb library is provided, for example, with over 600 verbs
classified according to Bloom’s Taxonomy. Elements of a course can be linked
to other elements, such as a competency to a core ability or external national,
state, or professional standard (provided in a Standard Library). Each competency
is linked to its associated learning objectives, learning activities, performance
assessment tasks, criteria and conditions for success, and standards. This allows
you to create new courses from existing ones, picking and choosing competencies/associated
elements from a Competency Bank.
Occupational Analysis
The DACUM (Developing a Curriculum Module) provides over 60 DACUM charts, and
allows you to enter your own. Duties and tasks can then be connected with the
rest of the curriculum design process.
Reports
As far as output, you can determine what you want included in reports, and how
the reports are formatted. A "Course Outcome Summary" is a perfect overview
of the course. A "Learning Plan" provides students with the clearest, cleanest,
most thorough answer to the perennial question, "Did I miss anything yesterday
when I was absent?" A "Performance Assessment Task" shows a student in advance
exactly what he or she must do in order to demonstrate mastery—removing subjectivity
in grading. A "Syllabus" delineates the course requirements, assignment schedule,
instructor and departmental policies, even the ADA statement. Little or no additional
input is required to generate these and other customized documents in Microsoft
Word and HTML.
Success
Our reading department now has a comprehensive four-course, outcomes-based program.
When a student leaves a course and moves on, the instructor in the next course
can be confident that the skills required were learned and mastery has been
clearly demonstrated in a measurable way. Part-time instructors have a "standard"
course syllabus with well-defined course competencies, linked to our college-wide
goals and departmental policies.
All in all, our strategic planning for learning paid off. We continue to meet
learning and teaching challenges with the use of WIDS.