Alyssa ED520

These are some suggestions to keep in mind when prototyping a course or user experience design. One of the things I found myself needing to do was scrapping entire concepts and starting over, as they did not suit the demands of the course. It can be difficult to essentially throw away old work--and the time spent creating it--but it pays off in the long run. Another big thing is keeping the design elements simple at first. It is easy to get carried away with ideas for design early on, but as the prototype evolves through its reiterations, those original ideas may not have a real need or place any longer. For this reason, putting minimal effort into the them in the earlier stages protect designers from wasting time and effort on something that might not even make it to the final product.

The evaluation phase is vital to the design process because it requires that designers take a step back and make sure that the product is effective, efficient, and meets the goals set at the project's outset-- or that any necessary adjustments are made in order to make that happen. During the evaluation phase, various members of the design team can provide feedback on the current iteration of the course. Within the design team, individuals of various roles may be involved in the process of evaluating the course, including instructional designers, SMEs, educators, stakeholders, and learners themselves. Each member of the group offers a unique perspective and brings varying levels of expertise to the table, allowing the evaluation process to be comprehensive and inclusive. One way that the course can be evaluated is through the use of psychometric data. Psychometric data refers to measurable psychological traits such as knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes, and preferences, and it...

Level 1: Reaction The learning content of my project is both engaging for participants and relevant to the broader topic of working with and caring for parrots. I developed the course topics/units with progression in mind by starting off with the basics such as species, sex, and habitat identification and building up to more challenging topics such as behavioral cues and training. Each objective is paired with a unique and engaging assessment that serves to test student knowledge and application skills as opposed to busy work and rote memorization. Several of these involve opportunities for live interaction with parrots through observation, handling, and training. The learning objectives and matching assessments were also created with clarity in mind. Each learning objective is qualified and specifies how it can/will be met by students, and the name, associated objective, and description of each assessment is detailed.