As a coach with Advanced Learning Partnerships, I have the privilege of working school divisions participating in the Virginia is for Learners Innovative Network (#VA4LIN). If you live in Virginia you may have heard about this sweeping initiative launched by the Virginia Department of Education with support from VaSCL, JMU, and Ted Dintersmith. ALP coaches are working with the schools and divisions in the network who have identified their own priorities for promoting innovation.
One of the divisions I’m working with, Bedford County Public Schools, has already initiated efforts related to personalized learning prior to joining the network and asked for some support with developing online and blended learning. Division staff want to leverage online technologies to provide more personalized support for both learning opportunities for students and professional development for adults in the system. I met with a group of ITRTs (Instructional Technology Resource Teachers), library/media specialists, and others in Bedford County on May 9 to review instructional design for online and blended learning. Our goal was to develop design specifications for educators in Bedford County to refer to when designing their own learning materials.
I provided access to materials based on my book, Online Professional Development, Design, Deliver, Succeed! and subsequent publications. We reviewed key instructional design principles, considered how staff are currently addressing them, and considered how these principles might be presented in the first draft of a design specifications document. The key ideas we reviewed include:
- Know your audience.
- Define your learning outcomes.
- Assess your learning outcomes.
- Consider your visual design.
- Match media to your outcomes.
- Evaluate your learning.
You can access the slide deck with links to handouts and templates on Google Drive. Let me know if it’s helpful. Next steps for the, the participants include returning to existing online professional learning to review what has already been developed and determine how the specifications might impact that work.
