On Friday, my colleagues and I shared what we learned from the Things in the Pedagogy track of the 23 Framework Things. I was assigned Thing 22: Online Teaching. I selected to complete Option 3, though I didn’t do the activity:

Post a brief comment below describing the outline for an online learning object (lesson) using the steps in the book to guide you. What part of the Framework will you focus on? Create an outcome statement, and select one of the common instructional design program activities (p.29) to assess the student’s competency.

However, I do think that I’d be interested in developing something that helps students learn how to approach selecting a database. I imagine including research problem scenarios in which students would need to match up the problem to an appropriate database based on the description. In the notes I posted to my colleagues (see below), I refer to this briefly as we are working on developing content for a new GE course.

Here are my notes.

This module was presented by the steering committee of the New Literacies Alliance, which is a group of librarians from a variety of institutions working to design a common research instruction curriculum based on the ACRL Framework. The lessons they have created tie to particular knowledge practices and dispositions and are licensed under Creative Commons. Many appear in the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Sandbox. If you have looked at the Sandbox, many of the SoftChalk online modules, such as the Citations tutorial, were designed by librarians involved with the NLA.

For this module, I read Chapter 3 and Appendix E of Creating and Sharing Online Library Instruction: A How to Do it Manual for Librarians (2017) written by three NLA librarians, Joelle Pitts, Sara K. Kearns, and Heather Collins. The chapter outlines how to create learning objects using McTighe’s and Wiggins’ backward design curriculum planning model.

1. Identify desired results.
   • What should students be able to do at the end of the instruction?
     • Select components of the Framework to teach.
2. Determine assessment evidence.
   • How will we know if students have achieved the desired result?
     • Choose a Bloom’s Taxonomy level and verb
     • Outline an activity the students will complete to demonstrate desired results
     • Write a learning outcome.
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction.
   • How can we support learners as they come to understand important ideas and processes?
     • Create redundant digital learning objects to support the learning outcome.
     • Create assessment activity.

Identify Desired Results

• Learning objects should be kept to 8-15 minutes.
• The knowledge dispositions or practices you select will need to be modified because many of them are “too big” to cover in one object.
• Highlight one major frame in the outcome, even though there may be practices from different though related frames at play.
• Choose a level of expertise [novice, beginner, competent, proficient, expert (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1980)].

Determine Assessment Evidence

• Choose a Bloom’s Taxonomy level and verb
  • “The higher the Bloom’s Taxonomy level, the more difficult it is to design online learning objects and activities, especially if automated grading is desired” (p. 26).
    • This makes me feel a lot better about what can be achieved for modules we develop that are intended for instructors to assign to their students (WRI 01); these would be good for more concrete skills, such as selecting an appropriate/relevant database, etc. It does make me think about the SPRK courses, as well, mostly because two out of my three areas involve databases.
  • Write an outcome
    • The student will + Bloom’s Taxonomy verb + evidence + in order to + desired results = outcome
    • Bloom’s Taxonomy list on p. 27
    • Learning outcome formula checklist on p. 28
    • Common types of instructional design program activities on p. 29

 Plan Learning Experiences

• NLA has a storyboard template to serve as a guide for developing online learning objects (see Appendix D in the book as this was not included in the PDFs)
  • Introduction, background info
  • Relevancy to students’ lives
  • State the problem and possible solutions
  • Lesson climax activity
  • Assessment
• Have a peer review your learning object (see the Learning Object Rubric, Appendix E, p. 119)